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COPYRIGHT DEPOSrn 



THE 



Story of Marcus Whitman 



Early Protestant Missions 
IN THE Northwest 



REV. J. G. CRAIGHEAD, D.D. 




Presbyterian Board of Publication and 
Sabbath-school Work, Philadelphia, 1895 



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^^wVnM 



Copyright, 1895, by 
THE TRl'STEES OF THE PRESBYTERIAN BOARD 
OF PUBLICATION AND SABBATH- 
SCHOOL WORK. 



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31 (oJS 



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PREFACE. 



THE incentive to this volume was the wish to vindicate 
the characters and the work of the early Protestant 
missionaries in Oregon from aspersions which have been 
cast upon them ; to show the importance of their labors in 
the development and settlement of the country ; and to 
prove that it was through their public-spirited and patri- 
otic services that a large part of the Northwest territory 
was secured to the United States. 

The settlement of Oregon by any organized system 
began in the year 1834, when Christians in the Eastern 
States were induced, by the earnest desire of the Indians of 
the far .West for the Bible and religious instruction, to take 
active measures to provide them with religious teachers. 
As soon as practicable, missionaries were sent and mission 
stations established among them. The influence and ex- 
ample of the missionaries not only promoted a Christian 
civilization among the Indians, but also laid the founda- 
tion of orderly and law-abiding communities wherever 
they labored. Their coming opened the way for the 
pioneer settlers of the country ; an^ their stations formed a 
rallying point for American immigrants who were yearly 
attracted in large numbers from our Western States, and 
who afterward obtained ascendency in the new State. 

Nor is it beyond the facts in the case to say, as did 

(iii) 



iv Preface. 

Judge Boise in his address before the Pioneer Association 
of Oregon, that "history will record that these holy men 
were the nucleus around which has been formed and built 
the State of Oregon." They were ''men who knew how 
to plant in the virgin soil the seeds of virtue and knowl- 
edge, and cultivate them as they germinated and grew into 
churches, schools and colleges." 

Though the results of Protestant missions among the 
Indians in Oregon, owing to the peculiarly hostile condi- 
tions they had to encounter, were not all that the friends 
of the cause had at first expected, yet the presence and 
labors of the missionaries at this time were all important, 
and their effects are still felt in the religion, civilization 
and education which they introduced and zealously fos- 
tered. 

In the preparation of this volume I have, as far as possi- 
ble, availed myself of all known authorities contempora- 
neous with the facts discussed. Owing to the protracted 
controversy which has been waged respecting some of the 
events narrated, a more exhaustive examination was re- 
quired than would otherwise have been necessary. In 
every such instance I have striven to be honest and impar- 
tial in the testimony adduced. 

The author will feel amply repaid, if his search for the 
truth of history shall lead to a more general appreciation of 
the characters and services of the first Protestant mission- 
aries of the far West. 

Washington, D. C. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 



PAGE. 

Spain, France, Russia, Great Britain and the United States claim 
title — First three withdraw — United States claim the country 
by right of discovery and cession — Long controversy with 
Great Britain — Finally settled in 1872 9 

CHAPTER II. 

Lewis and Clark's exploration from the Missouri river to the 
Columbia, in 1805-6 — Valuable knowledge obtained — Gov- 
ernment promotes the settlement of the territory. . . . -. 16 

CHAPTER III. 

Missouri and Pacific Fur Companies — Expeditions by sea and 
land — Astoria and other posts occupied — Loss of ship Ton- 
quin — Pacific Fur Company prosperous — War with Great 
Britain — Fear of capture of fort, fur and supplies — Sale to 
North West Company by Mr. Astor's agents — Inglorious 
ending of his company — Treachery charged 21 

CHAPTER IV. 

The North West Company — Its origin, explorations and repressive 
policy — The Hudson Bay Company, its charter rights and its 
power — Bloody conflicts with the North West Company — The 
two united with increased power — Destruction of all rival 
traders — Indians kept in barbarism — Opposition to all 

civilized settlement of the country 31 

(V) 



vi Contents. 

CHAPTER V. 

PAGE 

Indians seeking the Bible — Response of churches — Methodist 
missionaries — Mission of the American Board — Journey to the 
Columbia river — Kind reception — Stations selected — Rein- 
forcements — Success among Indians — Jesuit missionaries — 
Conflicting interests. 41 

CHAPTER VI. 

The missions prosperous — Hudson Bay Company's policy to 
occupy the country — Americans resist it — Dr. Whitman visits 
Washington to save Oregon — His perilous winter ride — Ar- 
rival at Washington — Interviews with President Tyler and 
leading statesmen — He renders important service — Unwise 
claims of his friends 58 

CHAPTER VII. 

Dr. Whitman's visit to Boston — Return to Oregon with nearly one 
thousand immigrants — Services as guide and physician — 
Oregon saved to the United States by this large immigration 
— American and Hudson Bay policies conflict— Hostility 
shown to Americans and Protestant missionaries — Acts and 
motives misrepresented — Sickness among Indians — Massacre 
of Dr. Whitman and others 74 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Prolonged paper discussion over the massacre — Agent Ross 
Browne's report — A valuable Senate document — Roman 
Catholic writers assail and deny its statements — Try to vindi- 
cate the conduct of their priests — In so doing, make serious 
charges against Protestant missionaries — Defense of the latter 
— Their good character and usefulness shown %^ 

CHAPTER IX. 

Wisdom and honesty of Protestant missionaries impugned — Their 
alleged promises to pay Indians for land — Scandals proven 



Contents. vii 



false Their work depreciated on the ground that the Indians 

were not improved — Vindicated by the facts — Important 
results of Protestant missions 102 

CHAPTER X. 

Catholic missionaries— Methods of the priests— Wholesale bap- 
tisms Indians not permanently benefited — Proofs of failure 

—Their missions reinforced— Complaints of Dr. Whitman— 
His great generosity — Events prior to the massacre— Indians 
influenced by priests and others — Destruction of Protestant 
mission the result 120 

CHAPTER XL 

The controversy over the massacre continued — Defense made by 
accused parties — Indians hostile to Dr. Whitman had resolved 
to kill him— Reasons assigned— Charges of taking their lands 
and poisoning them— Deaths by disease— Accounts of the 
massacre by priests and Hudson Bay Company — Causes stated 
inadequate— Some of the statements false— Approximate 
causes 135 

CHAPTER XII. 

The murderers Cayuse Indians — Roman Catholic half breeds and 
Hudson Bay employes the instigators — Object to break up the 
Protestant missions — Catholics and Hudson Bay people un- 
harmed — Active agency of half-breeds — Indirect influence of 
priests over Indians — They and Hudson Bay Company 
blamed — Conclusions from the evidence 152 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Survivors at Waiilatpu — Proper sympathy and aid not extended to 
them — Hudson Bay Company blamed for not preventing the 
massacre — Its agents charged with cruelty to Messrs. Hall 
and Osborne — Miss Bevvley's sufferings — Her deposition — 
Lack of protection at the priests' camp 169 



viii Contents, 

CHAPTER XIV. 

PAGE. 

Dr. Whitman's journey East in 1842-43 — Its purpose — Visit to 
Washington and influence there both questioned — Confirmed 
by his letters, and by a Congressional bill — His patriotic and 
valuable services — Evidence that he more than any other 
person, saved Oregon to the United States 1 83 

APPENDIX. 

Letter from Dr. Whitman to James M. Porter, Secretary of War. . 197 
Whitman's Ride 205 



THE STORY OF MARCUS WHITMAN. 



CHAPTER I. 

OREGON. THE CONTEST FOR POSSESSION. 

ORIGINALLY, the territory of Oregon comprised all 
the country lying between the Rocky Mountains 
and the Pacific Ocean, bounded on the north by the Rus- 
sian possessions, latitude 54° 40', and on the south by the 
northern border of California, latitude 42°. It extended 
seven hundred and fifty miles from north to south, and 
about five hundred miles from east to west, being nearly 
four times the size of Great Britain and Ireland combined. 
This huge territory was claimed, wholly or in part, by five 
powers— Spain, France, Russia, Great Britain and the 
United States. 

By the law of nations, the title to any country depends 
upon the first discovery and occupancy of it, or upon pur- 
chase or cession by treaty from the first discoverer or 
occupant. "• When a nation takes possession of a country 
to which no prior owner can lay claim," says Vattel, "it 
is considered as acquiring the empire or sovereignty of it. 
When a nation finds a country uninhabited and without 
an owner, it may lawfully take possession of it ; and after 

9 



lo The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

it has sufficiently made known its will in this respect, it 
cannot be deprived of it by any other nation." 

It is almost universally conceded that Spanish navi- 
gators were the first discoverers and first explorers of the 
northwest coast of America. After their conquests in 
Mexico they explored the adjacent seas and countries, and 
in 1543 discovered California. Nine years afterward they 
extended their exploration of the coast to Cape Blanco, 
43° north latitude; in 1582 to 57'^ 40', and in 1588 to 
Bering Strait. In 1592 Juan de Fuca discovered and en- 
tered the straits which bear his name, but for nearly two 
centuries thereafter the Spanish career of discovery v/as 
substantially at a standstill. In 1774-75 the Viceroy of 
Mexico fitted out two expeditions which surveyed the 
coast from Monterey up to latitude 54°, discovering 
Nootka Sound, the Island of Vancouver and the mouth 
of the Columbia River. Spanish vessels from Mexico in 
1792 also surveyed many of the bays and channels which 
lie between the 5 2d and 56th parallels. 

The rights of Spain, founded on discovery, were recog- 
nized, after a vigorous dispute, in the Nootka Convention 
of 1790, in which she yielded the right to navigate, trade 
and fish on the northwest coast, but reserved her sover- 
eignty over the entire territory described in the opening 
paragraph of this chapter. This treaty was reaffirmed in 
1814, when Great Britain assented anew to Spain's terri- 
torial claims. The rights of Spain were transferred in 
turn to the United States by the Florida treaty of 18 19, 
wherein ''His Catholic Majesty cedes all his rights, 
claims and pretensions to any territories north of the 
42d parallel of latitude." The boundary line thus de- 



The Contest for Possession. 1 1 

fined was confirmed in 1828 by Mexico, which had ob 
tained its independence. Meanwhile, France having 
acquired possession of Louisiana by cession from Spain 
in 1800, the United States, in 1803, purchased "all its 
rights and appurtenances, as fully and in the same manner 
as it had been acquired from Spain;" and the northern 
boundary of Louisiana had been declared in 1763, by the 
treaty of Versailles between Great Britain and France, 
"to be a line drawn due west from the source of the 
Mississippi, assigning to England the territory north of 
the 49th parallel of latitude and east of the Mississippi." 

Russia having asserted her right to all the northwest 
coast and the islands north of latitude 51°, and Great 
Britain and the United States having protested, a pro- 
tracted correspondence had taken place, ending in an 
agreement, in 1824, that Russia should make no claim 
south of 54° 40', or the United States north of the same 
line. This left but two contestants for possession of Ore- 
gon — Great Britain and the United States. 

The claims of the United States did not rest solely on 
the rights transferred to them by treaty from other powers; 
they claimed sovereignty by right of discovery as well. 
In 1787 Captains Gray and Kendrick sailed from Boston 
for the northwest coast, and in September of the follow- 
ing year reached Nootka, where they passed the winter. 
In 1 79 1 Captain Gray surveyed the Straits of Fuca, 
whence he sailed to Canton and thence to the United 
States. He made a second voyage to the Pacific, and 
on the nth of May, 1792, discovered the mouth of the 
Columbia River, which he ascended twenty miles, trading 
with the natives and examining the country. In the 



12 The Story of Mai'cus WJiitman. 

meantime Captain Kendrick, who had remained on the 
coast, purchased from the native chiefs several large tracts 
of land near Nootka Sound, for the use of the commercial 
company he represented. From 1791 onward the north- 
west coast was visited yearly by many vessels from the 
United States engaged in trading enterprises, each expe- 
dition making new discoveries or adding to the knowledge 
of the territory already discovered; and from 1766 to 
about 1 81 5 the direct trade between the northwest coast 
and Canton was carried on exclusively by American ves- 
sels sailing under our own flag. 

Great Britain claimed priority of discovery of the 
Columbia River by Lieutenant Mears in 1788 and by 
Vancouver in 1792. But Mears' vessel was fitted out 
at Macoa, a Portuguese port, bore sailing papers written 
in the Portuguese language and sailed under the Portu- 
guese flag ; and both his journal and Vancouver's show 
that they not only did not discover the Columbia, but 
that they actually affirmed the impossibility of its exist- 
ence from the nature of the coast, in spite of the fact that 
Captain Gray had informed Vancouver of his discovery 
when they met, the April before, in the Straits of Fuca. 
This seems to dispose of Great Britain's claims based on 
prior discovery of the Columbia River. 

By way of perfecting their rights the United States be- 
gan, within a reasonable time, as required by the law of 
nations, to examine the territory with a view to forming 
settlements. President Jefferson, with the approval of 
Congress, commissioned Captains Lewis and Clark* in 

* In the Report of the expedition it is printed Clarke. Captain Clark 
wrote his name without the final vowel, as may be seen from his official 



The Contest for Possessio?t. 1 3 

1804, and instructed them to proceed to Oregon and ex- 
plore the Columbia River from its source to the Pacific 
Ocean. This they did, taking possession of the country 
as a part of the United States and making an encampment 
which they named Fort Clatsop, where they passed the 
winter of 1805-6. 

In 1808 the Missouri Fur Company established a trading 
post on the head waters of Lewis River, one of the prin- 
cipal branches of the Columbia; and the Pacific Fur 
Company, with John Jacob Astor at its head, sent out the 
ship Tonqidn in 18 10, with the necessary persons and 
material to establish posts for carrying on an active trade 
with the natives, in furs and other commodities. Arriving 
at the mouth of the Columbia in March, 181 1, the party 
selected a site for the principal factory, eight miles from 
the ocean, and named it Astoria. These were the first 
permanent settlements made in the territory of Oregon 
and the first steps taken to hold and civilize the country. 
They constitute the third claim, and a very strong one, in 
behalf of the United States. 

Nevertheless, Great Britain continued her contest. 
Many vain attempts to reconcile the conflicting interests 
of the two countries by negotiation served to increase 
rather than allay existing jealousies and animosities, and 
war at one time appeared almost unavoidable. The peace 
policy, however, finally prevailed, and the right of owner- 
ship was settled in June, 1846, by a treaty concluded in 
the city of Washington. By its terms the boundary line 

correspondence with the Government while Superintendent of Indian 
Affairs in the Northwest. Hereafter his name wiU appear as he speUed 
it in this book. 



14 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

between the territorial possessions of the two countries 
was to begin at '* the point on the forty-ninth parallel of 
north latitude, where the boundary laid down in existing 
treaties and conventions * between the United States and 
Great Britain terminates, and shall continue westward 
along the said forty-ninth parallel of north latitude to the 
middle of the channel which separates the continent from 
Vancouver's Island, and thence southerly through the 
middle of the said channel and of Fuca's Straits to the 
Pacific Ocean." There were two conditions connected 
with this : First, that the navigation of said channel and 
straits south of the forty-ninth parallel was to be open and 
free to both parties; and, second, that all possessory 
rights acquired by British subjects were to be respected. 

One indefinite element in the treaty of 1846 afterward 
caused great trouble. As it was impossible accurately to 
define the water part of the boundary line, this was left to 
be subsequently settled by a Commission. This Commis- 
sion never reached any satisfactory conclusion, owing to 
the diverse interpretations given to the first article of the 
treaty. Nor were later efforts for the settlement of this 
vexed question by the statesmen of Great Britain and the 
United States more successful. Great Britain insisted 
that by *' the middle of the channel " was meant the waters 
of the Straits of Rosario ; while the United States asserted 
just as positively that it meant the Canal de Haro, the 
most direct and best route to the Pacific Ocean. Great 
Britain claimed that the boundary line should run east of 

* The aUusion to existing conventions and treaties refers to those of 
1818 and 1827, and especiaUy to the Ashburton treaty in 1842, by which the 
boundary line east of the Rocky Mountains was established, from the 
Bay of Fundy to the Lake of the Woods. 



The Contest for Possession. 15 

the Island of San Juan ; the United States, that it should 
run west of the island, and between it and Vancouver's 
Island, thus leaving San Juan in possession of the United 
States. 

Thus the controversy continued between the two coun- 
tries until the treaty of Washington, in May, 1871, pro- 
vided for submitting the question at issue '' to the arbitra- 
tion and award of His Majesty the Emperor of Germany," 
whose decision should be final and without appeal, both 
parties agreeing to give effect to it '' without any objection, 
evasion, or delay whatsoever." The case of the United 
States was submitted in December, 1871, by Hon. George 
Bancroft, our Minister at Berlin ; and the case of Great 
Britain by Admiral Prevost. The award was made in 
October, 1872, the Emperor decreeing ''that the claim of 
the United States of America is most in accordance with 
the true interpretation of the treaty of 1846." The 
promptness and good faith with which the British Govern- 
ment gave effect to this decision brought to a friendly close 
the last of a series of boundary controversies which had 
been waged between two of the most important nations of 
the world for not less than ninety years. 



CHAPTER 11. 

EXPLORATION BY ORDER OF CONGRESS. 

IN 1803, the same year in which Louisiana was purchased 
from France, and before the transfer of the territory 
was completed, President Jefferson addressed a confiden- 
tial message to Congress recommending that measures 
be taken without delay for the examination of the country 
west of the Rocky Mountains. Congress approving, 
Captains Merriweather Lewis and William Clark were 
commissioned to have charge of the expedition. They 
were instructed to explore the Missouri River to its source, 
and then to seek for some stream running to the Pacific, 
'' whether the Columbia, the Oregon, the Colorado, or any 
other which might offer the most direct and practicable 
water communication across the continent, for the purposes 
of commerce ; and to trace the same to its termination in 
the Pacific." 

The party under command of Captain Lewis, consisting 
of thirty men, set out for the West, expecting to advance 
some distance up the Missouri River before ice should pre- 
vent further progress. They were not permitted, however, 
to pass beyond the Mississippi, the Spanish commander of 
this territory not having been informed of its transfer to 
the United States. Consequently it was not until May, 
1804, that they began the ascent of the Missouri. The 

16 



Exploration by Order of Co7igress. 1 7 

current was so strong that their three boats made but 
slow progress, and October had passed before they ar- 
rived in the country of the Mandan Indians, some 1600 
miles from the mouth of the river, where they went into 
camp. 

Resuming their voyage up the Missouri on the 7th of 
April, 1805, in three weeks they reached the junction of 
the Yellowstone. Soon afterward their progress was arrested 
by what was then known as the Great Falls of the Missouri, 
and nearly a month was consum.ed in transporting the canoes 
and their cargoes to a point above the falls, and in con- 
structing additional boats out of the large trees that grew 
on the river banks. In July they went on, and passed 
through the gates of the Rocky Mountains, a narrow 
channel six miles long, where the river breaks through the 
mountains. Above here a large number of streams flow 
into the Missouri ; the largest of these, which they named 
the Jefferson, they explored to its source near the. forty- 
fourth degree of latitude, about 3000 miles from where 
they began the ascent of the Missouri. Abandoning their 
canoes, and storing a portion of their goods at the head of 
the Jefferson River, the party provided themselves with 
horses and guides from the Shoshone Indians, and on the 
30th of August began their journey through the Rocky 
Mountains. 

This was by far the most difficult part of their route. 
They underwent, says Capt. Clark, " every suffering which 
hunger, cold and fatigue could impose." Food was insuf- 
ficient, and difficult to procure, consisting of berries, dried 
fish, and the meat of dogs and horses; the mountains were 
high, and the passes were rough and frequently covered 



1 8 The Sto7'y of Marcus WhiiJtiaji. 

with snow. They crossed many streams flowing westward ; 
finally, on the 7th of October, they embarked on one of 
the largest of these, in five canoes which they had con- 
structed, and descended it till they reached a river, which 
they named the Lewis, and which proved to be the prin- 
cipal southern tributary of the Columbia. Continuing 
their voyage on the Lewis for seven days more, they came 
to its confluence with the larger northern branch, to which 
they gave the name Clark. Passing down the Columbia, 
whose waters they had now reached, they arrived at the 
great falls on the 2 2d of October, and on the 30th, at the 
lower falls, a short distance below which they saw the tides 
of the Pacific. On the 1 7th of November the horizon line 
of the ocean was visible, and all realized that the explora- 
tion was complete, and that a new way had been discovered 
through the trackless wilderness between the Eastern States 
and the Northwest coast. 

A landing was made on the north bank of the river, but 
the party afterwards crossed to the south side, where they 
formed an encampment, giving it the name of Fort Clatsop. 
Here the winter of 1805-6 was passed ; but the rains were 
so frequent, long continued and violent that comparatively 
little could be done in the way of surveys or explorations , 
of the river and adjacent country. 

The explorers began their return voyage to the United 
States on the 23d of March, 1806. Before leaving, they 
prepared an account of their outward journey, which was 
written on parchment and posted in the fort, copies being 
given also to the natives for the benefit of any who might 
come after. It stated that the expedition had been sent 
out by the United States Government, and had reached 



Exploration by Order of Congress. 19 

the Pacific Ocean through the Rocky Mountains, and by 
way of the Missouri and Columbia Rivers. 

Ascending the Columbia in canoes, the party reached 
the falls, about 125 miles from the Pacific, by the middle 
of April. On their way up they discovered a large stream 
flowing into the Columbia from the north, called the Cow- 
litz by the natives, and another, the Willamette, thirty 
miles away, joining the Columbia on the south. From the 
falls the exploring party proceeded by land to the Rocky 
Mountains, and through them to the Clark River, where it 
was agreed that the chiefs of the expedition should separate, 
to meet again at the junction of the Yellowstone and Mis- 
souri Rivers. 

The party under Captain Lewis first proceeded down 
the Clark River, then crossed the mountains to the head- 
waters of the Maria River, which they followed down to its 
union with the Missouri. Captain Clark and his party 
journeyed southward, up the valley of the Clark to the 
sources of that stream, then crossed the mountains to the 
head-waters of the Yellowstone, which they descended in 
canoes to the Missouri, meeting Lewis and his men on the 
1 2th of August. The united party embarked on the Mis- 
souri, and reached St. Louis on the 23d of September, 1806, 
having traveled, in going and returning, more than 9000 
miles. 

This expedition was a great success, judged by the extent 
and value of the discoveries made, though it was not the 
first passage of the Rocky Mountains by whites. Alexander 
Mackenzie had crossed them in 1789, and again in 1792 ; 
in his first journey reaching the Arctic Ocean, and in his 
second the tide- waters of the Pacific at Vancouver. French 



20 The Stoi-y of Marcus Whitman. 

and Spanish fur traders, also, had previously ascended the 
Missouri as far as the mouth of the Yellowstone ; but com- 
paratively little correct knowledge of the river or the adja- 
cent country was possessed before the Lewis and Clark ex- 
plorations. The journals of the latter furnished the first 
authentic and definite accounts we have of that vast terri- 
tory between the falls of the Missouri and those of the Col- 
umbia; they were long regarded as the principal source of 
information respecting the geography, the natural history, 
and the aboriginal inhabitants of that part of the continent. 
It was, therefore, only three or four years after this great 
territory came into our possession that its principal features 
were made known, and the Government of the United 
States evinced its intention to occupy and settle the 
country. 



CHAPTER III. 

AMERICAN SETTLEMENTS. 

THE success of the expedition of Lewis and Clark 
arrested public attention, and speedily led to the 
organization of a number of companies for engaging in the 
fur trade with the natives of the Northwest. The first of 
these, the Missouri Fur Company, was formed in 1808, in 
St. Louis, and during the next two years established trading 
posts on the upper Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, and one 
west of the Rocky Mountains on Lewis River, the great 
southern branch of the Columbia. The latter was un- 
doubtedly the first permanent establishment in the country 
drained by the Columbia and its tributaries. It was aban- 
doned in 1 810 on account of the difficulty of securing pro- 
visions, but more particularly because of the hostility of 
the Indians in the vicinity. 

The first attempt to form a permanent settlement on the 
Columbia River itself was made in the early part of 1809, 
by some Bostonians, prominent among them the three 
brothers Winship. The ship Albatross was placed under 
command of Nathan Winship, and fitted out not only with 
everything necessary for trade with the natives, but also 
with materials for building, and for cultivation of the soil. 
The vessel reached the mouth of the Columbia in May, 
1 8 10, and ascended the river to a place called Oak 

21 



22 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

Point, where a house was built, land cleared and a garden 
planted. The site selected proved unfortunate in many 
respects, and was abandoned the same year. 

John Jacob- Astor, of New York City, organized in 1810 
the Pacific Fur Company, for the prosecution of the fur 
trade in the northwestern parts of the continent, in con- 
nection with commerce with China. The inception of the 
scheme was wholly Mr. Astor's, and he furnished the money 
necessary for its execution. His plan was to establish 
posts on the Missouri and Columbia Rivers, and on the 
coast contiguous to the latter, where the furs were to be 
collected for shipment either east to the United States, or 
to China where they could be exchanged for silks and 
tea. These posts were to be furnished with provisions and 
articles for barter with the Indians, either by way of the 
Missouri River, or by vessels direct from New York City. 
The principal post or factory, Astoria, was located near the 
mouth of the Columbia, and was to be the depot of sup- 
plies for all the others, and the general depository for the 
furs purchased. It was also the purpose of the Company 
to engage largely in trade with the Russian settlements on 
the Pacific, receiving furs in payment for provisions and 
other articles. 

This was a wise and comprehensive plan, and, at the 
time it was undertaken, appeared entirely practicable. For 
its more successful prosecution, Mr. Astor admitted as part- 
ners, Wilson G. Hunt, John Clarke and Robert McClel- 
lan, citizens of the United States ; and Alexander McKay, 
Duncan McDougall, Donald McKenzie, David and Robert 
Stuart, and Ramsey Crooks, Canadians. The voyageurs 
were nearly all Canadians, with Alexander McKay as com- 



American Seitlevients. 



23 



mander; while the majority of the clerks were Americans, 
and Mr. Hunt was made chief agent on the Pacific coast. 
The stock was divided into one hundred shares, half of 
which was owned by the projector; the remainder was 
divided equally among his partners. Mr. Astor agreed to 
furnish goods to the value of ^^400, 000, bear all losses for 
five years and divide the profits if any. 

The first expedition, consisting of four of the Scotch or 
Canadian partners, with eleven clerks and thirteen Cana- 
dian voyageurs, sailed from New York in September, 1810, 
on the ship Tonqidn. In January, 181 r, the second party 
left St. Louis, in charge of Mr. Hunt, accompanied by 
Messrs. McKenzie, McClellan and Crooks ; and in Octo- 
ber, the ship Beaver (i2LXx\Qdi out from New York Mr. Clarke 
and several additional clerks. 

The Tonquin arrived at the mouth of the Columbia in 
March, 181 1, and the passengers were landed on the shore 
of Baker's Bay. From this they removed to a high point 
of land on the south bank of the river ten miles from the 
ocean, where preparations were begun at once for building 
a fort and the other buildings necessary for the safety of 
the occupants, and for an extensive and lucrative trade 
with the natives. Astoria was the name given to the fort, 
in honor of the originator of the company. The ship 
which had borne them to the coast, after landing its pas- 
sengers and freight, sailed north to collect furs from the 
Russians, and to make additional arrangements for future 
trading. 

While building the fort, the Americans received a visit 
from a party of men belonging to the North West Com- 
pany, under the leadership of a Mr, Thompson, who had 



24 11^^ Story of Marcus Whitman. 

been sent from Canada the previous year with instructions 
to occupy the mouth of the river before the Americans 
should effect a settlement there. On their way down the 
Columbia, the party had built huts and named the more 
prominent points on the river, thus taking formal posses- 
sion, as they supposed, of all the territory ; but having 
been detained on their journey and compelled to winter in 
the Rocky Mountains, they arrived too late to accomplish 
their purpose. The British Government, through its com- 
missioners, afterward claimed that Thompson's occupation 
of the country was prior to that of the Pacific Fur Com- 
pany. As a matter of fact, however, Captains Lewis and 
Clark descended the Columbia to its mouth in November, 
1805 \ while the North West Company established their first 
post beyond the Rocky Mountains in i8c6, and this was 
far north of any part of the Columbia River. 

When Mr. Thompson and his company returned north- 
ward, they were accompanied by a party from the Ameri- 
can fort under charge of David Stuart, who established a 
trading post at the confluence of the Okanagon River 
with the Columbia, four hundred miles above Astoria. 
Several other posts were built during this and the follow- 
ing year by the Astor Company. The principal one was 
on the Spokan ; it was used as a place of trade up to 1825, 
being occupied afterward successively by the North West 
Company and the Hudson Bay Company. 

The party of sixty men under the Chief Agent, Mr. 
Hunt, who were to ascend the Missouri River and cross the 
Rocky Mountains to the head-waters of the Columbia, 
reached Astoria by way of the latter river in the spring of 
18 1 2. They suffered much from hunger and cold, the 



American Settlements. 25 

opposition of rival companies, and the hostility of the 
Indians. Scarcely had they reached their destination when 
word was brought by the natives of the destruction of the 
ship TGnqidn and the massacre of the entire crew by the 
Indians near the Straits of Fuca. 

In May, 181 2, the ship Beaver ^xt'xnqA at the factory, 
bringing the third detachment of persons in the service of 
the Company, and a large amount of supplies. Notwith- 
standing the severe blow occasioned by the loss of the 
Tonquin^ the surviving partners determined to prosecute 
the enterprise with increasing energy ; and Mr. Hunt was 
dispatched in the Beaver to complete the commercial 
arrangements with the Russian settlements on the northern 
coasts, leaving Mr. McDougall in charge of the fort. 

The affairs of the Company were at this time prosper- 
ous ; provisions were abundant, and a large quantity of furs 
had been collected, awaiting the return of the Beaver to 
transport them to China; when in January, 1813, news 
reached Astoria that war had begun between the United 
States and Great Britain. This was followed by informa- 
tion that the Beaver was blockaded by a British cruiser in 
the port of Canton, whither rt had gone with a cargo of 
furs instead of returning to the Columbia. 

Two agents of the North West Company named McTavish 
and Laroque arrived at Astoria soon afterward, bringing 
reports of British victories on the northern frontier of the 
United States, and of a British naval expedition on its 
way to take possession of the Columbia River. They were 
received by Mr. McDougall and Mr. McKenzie,. the only 
partners of the Pacific Fur Company at the factory, with 
every mark of friendship, and supplied with provisions 



2 6 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

from the stores of the fort ; and also, as some authorities 
state, with goods for trading with the Indians. They were 
treated, in short, as if they had been allies and not rivals 
and foes. The exigencies of the situation led to secret 
conferences between hosts and guests, resulting finally in 
the announcement by Messrs. McDougall and McKenzie 
that they would dissolve the Pacific Fur Company on the 
I St of the following June, should no relief come mean- 
while. They made known their decision to the other resi- 
dent partners, Messrs. Stuart and Clarke, who were absent 
at the Company's two principal neighbor posts ; but both 
these men opposed the idea of abandoning the property of 
the Company, and, on the ground that assistance miglit 
still reach them from the United States, secured the prom- 
ise of a few months' delay. In the meantime several of 
the employes at Astoria left and went into the service of 
the North West Company. 

The hoped-for relief came not. Mr. Astor had sent out 
the ship Lark in March, 1813, with men and supplies, but 
unfortunately it was wrecked near one of the Hawaiian 
Islands. The frigate Adams was ordered by the United 
States Government to the North Pacific to protect the 
establishment at Astoria ; but just as she was ready to sail 
from New York it became necessary to transfer her crew to 
Lake Ontario to repel the British in that direction, and the 
blockade of American ports by the enemy prevented all 
further efforts at protection. 

During this interval the North West Company's party had 
returned to Astoria and stated that an armed ship was on 
its way from London for the purpose of destroying every- 
thing American which might be found on the Northwest 



Amei'ican Settlements. 27 

coast. They accordingly renewed their offer to purchase 
at a fair valuation all the buildings, furs and stock in hand 
of the Pacific Fur Company. The terms of sale were ac- 
cepted, after much bargaining and delay, by McDougall, 
who was in charge of the factory; and on the i6th of 
October, 181 3, the contract of sale was signed, by which 
the price to be paid was set at $40,000.'^ 

Scarcely had the sale been completed and the movable 
property transferred from the factory to the boats of the 
North West Company, when a British sloop-of-war entered 
the Columbia, hoping to secure a rich prize in the capture 
of Astoria with its supply of provisions and its collection of 
furs. The United States flag was still on the factory, and 
McDougall in charge ready to surrender on demand ; but 
all that could make the capture valuable was already far up 
the Columbia, on board the barges of the rival company. 
Nothing was left to the British captain but the satisfaction 
of lowering the American and hoisting the English flag and 
renaming the factory. Fort George. 

Mr. Hunt, the general agent of the Pacific Fur Company, 
learning that a British force had been ordered to the 
Pacific for the purpose of seizing the American possessions 
on the Columbia, proceeded at once to the Hawaiian Islands 
and chartered the American brig Pedlar, in which he 

* Bancroft, " $80,000." 

Wheeler says, " about$58,ooo ;" but this is of slight importance. Mr. Gray 
states that the appraised value of the furs alone at the factory was $36,835.50, 
leaving but little more than $3000 for all the buildings at Astoria, and 
those at Okanagon and Spokan, which, with the necessary equipments for 
trade, had cost the company nearly $200,000. When it became necessary 
for the United States to purchase this property in 1865, the Hudson Bay 
Company, after using it for more than forty years, asked for the three es- 
tablishments more than $100,000. 



28 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

sailed for Astoria, where he arrived in February, 1814. 
But he found the sale consummated, the property removed, 
and McDougall superintending the factory as agent and 
partner of the North West Company. Mr. Hunt could do 
nothing but receive the Montreal bills given in payment 
for the Company's effects; with these he reembarked in the 
Pedlar, and proceeded to the United States by way of 
Canton. 

Such was the inglorious ending of Mr. Astor's well- 
planned scheme to establish settlements and trade on the 
Pacific coast. Its failure was due to no lack of wisdom in 
its inception or of resources for its successful prosecution, 
but chiefly to circumstances which could not reasonably 
have been anticipated. One of these was the war with 
Great Britain, which made all communication with the settle- 
ments, either by sea or land, uncertain and difficult, and 
rendered the furs collected of little value as they could not 
be transported by the Company's vessels to a market in 
China; another was the treachery of Mr. Astor's Canadian 
partners, who, during Mr. Hunt's absence from Astoria, 
entered into a compact with agents of the North West Com- 
pany for the sale of the property that had been left in their 
custody. It is not surprising that Mr. Astor declared, 
when he heard of the transaction, that he would have much 
preferred the capture and destruction of all his property by 
the enemy, to seeing it bartered away in so disgraceful a 
manner. 

We are aware that Mr. Greenhow, in his history of 
Oregon, presents a plausible excuse for the conduct of 
the agents who effected the sale, although admitting that 
their motives will ever be open to suspicion. Not being 



American Settlements. 29 

citizens of the United States, he reasons, they could not be 
expected to resist with force an attempt to seize the forts 
and property of the Company ; and believing these to be in 
danger of capture, they resorted to a sale as the best method 
of protecting the interests of all concerned. 

Other writers have adopted this view, or have been con- 
tent to ascribe the war of 1812 as a sufficient cause for the 
failure of the Astor enterprise. Rev. Myron Eells, for in- 
stance, in his History of Indian Missions on the Pacific 
Coast, ^ states that - Astoria was sold to the Northwestern 
Fur Company owing to the war of 18 12 with England." 

As opposed to this, and confirmatory of the view given 
above, we have the statement of Gabriel Franchere, a 
British subject from Montreal who was connected with the 
Pacific Fur Company, and was at Astoria when all the 
transactions took place. In his volume entitled North- 
west Coast of America, p. 178, he says : - Mr. Hunt (who 
had returned from the Sandwich Islands) was surprised 
beyond measure when we informed him of the resolution 
we had taken of abandoning the country ; he blamed us 
severely for having acted with so much precipitation." 
On p. 191 he gives an account of the '' stratagem " of the 
North West Company to get possession, by representing 
through a letter of Mr. Shaw, a partner of that company, 
that the ship Isaac Todd and the frigate PhcEbe had sailed 
from England with orders from the Government to seize 
the establishment. He further states that this had a most 
important influence in selling; and complains of " such 
treatment on the part of the British Government, after the 
assurance we had received from Mr. Jackson, His Majesty's 

*p. 151. 



$o The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

Charge d'affaires, previous to our departure from New 
York." And then, on p. 203, he shows how easily the 
property of the Pacific Fur Company could have been 
saved from capture by the British sloop-of-war. " It was 
only necessary to get rid of the land party of the North 
West Company, who were completely in our power, then 
remove our effects by boat up the river upon some small 
stream, and await the result." 

This is precisely what was done with the property by the 
North West Company, after getting possession of it.* '' The 
charge of treason to Mr. Astor's interests, in the eyes of 
the world, will always be attached to their characters, 
McDougall and McKenzie, Astor's partners. McDougall, 
as a reward for betraying the trust reposed in him, was 
made a partner in the North West Company." 

Mrs. Victor passes the same judgment upon the transac- 
tion. ''The Canadian partners," she says, "took advan- 
tage of the situation to betray Mr. Astor's interests, "f 

* Hubert Bancroft says that the property could not have been thus saved 
by the members of the Company, as the Indians and the North West Com- 
pany would have prevented their getting supplies— that the latter Com- 
pany was determined to drive them out. 

\ River of the West, p. 34. 



CHAPTER IV. 

FOREIGN TRADING COMPANIES. 

OF the foreign companies, claiming exclusive privi- 
leges of trade in this vast country, the North West, 
though not the first formed, was the first to come into 
active competition with American enterprises; and, as we 
have seen, succeeded to the property at Astoria and to the 
trade so auspiciously begun there. The Company was or- 
ganized in 1784,* at Montreal, and its forty shares were 
distributed among the men engaged directly in its service, 
in this way securing their devotion to its interests. Part of 
the stock was held by the agents, who resided in Montreal 
and supplied goods and the necessary capital ; the rest by 
the partners, who conducted the business at the interior 
trading posts or forts, and the clerks, who traded directly 
with the natives. Goods required for the trade were im- 
ported from England, and then carried in boats to the most 
distant posts of the Company ; and the furs obtained in 
exchange were sent back in the same way to Montreal. 

Desiring to extend its trade as rapidly as possible, the 
Company sent out several exploring expeditions. The 
first, led by Mackenzie, in 1789, discovered the Mackenzie 
River and followed it to the ocean. Tlie second, in 1793, 

* Bancroft, 1793. 

31 



32 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

under the same intrepid explorer, started from Fort Chipe- 
wan and crossed the American continent at its widest part, 
and, by way of Frazer's River, reached the Pacific Ocean 
at the mouth of an inlet named by Vancouver the Cascade 
Canal. Other agents of the Company explored the coun- 
try southwest to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, the 
region drained by the head- waters of the Missouri. In 
this way a more accurate knowledge was obtained of the 
country, while avenues were opened for a prosperous and 
greatly extended trade. Its explorations west of the Rocky 
Mountains, however, were all far north of the waters of the 
Columbia River. 

The first establishment founded by the Nortli West Com- 
pany west of the Rocky Mountains was in 1805, on Mc- 
Leod Lake, near the 54th parallel of latitude ; its pur- 
pose was to give the Company eventual control of the 
trade in the entire country watered by the Columbia and 
its tributaries. Such efforts were natural and to be ex- 
pected, as the expedition of Lewis and Clark excited the 
jealousy of the British Government and all the foreign 
trading companies, and led the North West Company to 
send a party in all haste down the northern branch of the 
Columbia in 181 1 to secure prior possession. It contin- 
ued to be the settled policy of this Company to drive out 
of the country all parties engaged in trade with the In- 
dians, so that it might maintain its monopoly in furs. 
Nor was it scrupulous as to means. If fair competition 
would not avail it did not hesitate to resort to the most 
unjustifiable measures, even to exciting the natives to 
plunder and murder. 

But while thus actively engaged in extending its trade 



Foreign Trading Companies. 33 

across the continent and supplanting the enterprise and 
influence of otliers, and especially all American traders, 
it encountered a formidable competitor and rival in the 
Hudson Bay Company, which could not be subdued and 
driven from the field. 

This Company owed its origin to a charter granted in 
1670 by Charles II to an association of London mer- 
chants, covering all the region of country surrounding 
Hudson Bay. An important consideration in granting 
the charter was that, through the explorations of agents of 
the association, the regions lying west of Hudson and 
Baffin Bays would be made known and a means of water 
communication discovered between the Atlantic and 
Pacific Oceans. The management of the Company was 
placed in the hands of a governor or deputy governor and 
a committee of seven members residing in London, and 
the powers conferred were exclusive and well-nigh sover- 
eign. The charter gave the grantees not only the entire 
trade and commerce of that vast region, but also made 
them proprietors of the territory, and authorized them to 
establish courts and enact civil and criminal laws for the 
government of their possessions. All other persons were 
forbidden, under heavy penalties, to trade within their 
domain, and they were empowered to build fortifications 
to protect their rights and property against intruders 
throughout that portion of America drained by streams 
entering Hudson Bay. 

Under such encouraging conditions this powerful cor- 
poration gradually extended its influence among the na- 
tives and established its trading posts, till in due course it 
set about the destruction of all troublesome rivals, includ- 



34 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

ing the North West Company. The plan adopted was to 
grant to Lord Selkirk, a Scotch nobleman, 100,000 square 
miles of land around Red River for purposes of coloniza- 
tion. To have this territory thus occupied would have 
been ruinous to the North West Company, whose chief 
route from Canada to their northwestern trading posts ran 
through it, while from it were obtained most of the pro- 
visions required for those posts. The validity of the grant 
was therefore denied by the North West Company and re- 
sistance made to the settlement of the country ; and when 
finally the governor of the new province attempted by 
proclamation to prohibit all persons from trading within 
its limits, a deadly feud began between the two great cor- 
porations. In 1 8 16 their respective adherents engaged in 
a bloody battle near Fort Douglas, in which the Hudson 
Bay party were defeated and twenty-two of them killed, 
including the governor, and the fort occupied by the 
victors. 

This only served to intensify the hostility between the 
companies, who, enlisting their employes and the Indians 
over whom they had influence, engaged in frequent and 
bloody strifes, until they wiped out well-nigh the entire 
profits of the fur trade and endangered the lives of all 
white men by the savage feelings they had excited among 
the natives. 

This condition of affairs was brought before the British 
Parliament in 1810 and a compromise was effected, where- 
by the rival corporations were united in July, 182 1, under 
the name of the Hudson Bay Company. The united 
Company received grants for exclusive trade for twenty- 
one years in all the territory north of Canada and the 



Foreign Trading Companies. 35 

United States and in that west of the Rocky Mountains ; 
and the servants of the Company were commissioned to 
act as justices of peace, so that the jurisdiction of the 
courts of Upper Canada was carried to the shores of the 
Pacific. 

This union proved most advantageous, and the Hudson 
Bay Company spared neither effort nor expense to acquire 
influence over all the Indian tribes and to erect trading 
posts west of the Rocky Mountains, especially on the 
Columbia River and its tributaries. ^'The agents of the 
Company," says Mr. Greenhow, ''were seen in every 
part of the continent, north and northwest of the United 
States and Canada, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 
hunting, trapping and trading with the aborigines ; its 
boats went on every stream and lake, conveying British 
goods into the interior or furs to the great depositories on 
each ocean, for shipment to England in British vessels. 
Of the trading posts, many were fortified and could be de- 
fended by their inmates — men inured to hardships and 
dangers — against all attacks which might be apprehended ; 
and the whole vast expanse of territory, including the re- 
gions drained by the Columbia, was, in fact, occupied by 
British forces and governed by British laws, though there 
was not a suigle British soldier, technically speaking, 
within its limits." 

The Company succeeded so well and became so power- 
ful that American citizens were obliged not only to relin- 
quish all hope of trade in the interior but even to with- 
draw their vessels from the coast. It had in the year 
1846, according to the testimony of Sir James Douglas, 
55 officers and 513 articled men in its employ. These 



36 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

were all bound by a strict agreement to subserve, under 
all circumstances, the interests of the Company, and were 
forbidden to acquire any personal or real estate, were de- 
pendent upon their pay as its servants, and were subject to 
any punishment which should be inflicted by the officer 
in charge for neglect of duty. It had twenty-three forts 
and five trading stations judiciously situated for its busi- 
ness and forming a network of posts supporting each other. 
It had trading parties extending into California, Utah, 
Arizona, Montana and the Rocky Mountains, and north 
along the northwestern water-shed of the Rocky Moun- 
tains. It had two steamers to enter all the bays, harbors 
and rivers of the Pacific coast from Mexico to Russian 
America. With this number of men and resources we 
can readily admit Sir James Douglas' claim that the Com- 
pany "possessed an extraordinary influence with the In- 
dians, and in 1846 practically enjoyed a monopoly of the 
fur trade in the country west of the Rocky Mountains." 

Similar testimony as to the Company's power is given 
in a report of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs in 
1839, by Mr. Hall J. Kelley, who visited Oregon in 1835 
and 1836. *'The Company exercise full authority over 
all," he says, "whether Indians, English or Americans, 
who are in its service, and in a manner always injurious 
and generally disastrous to all others who undertake to 
trade or settle in the territory. It may be said, in fact, 
that Americans, except associated with this Company, are 
not permitted to carry on a traffic within several hundred 
miles of the Company's posts." He proceeds to show 
how the trade and commerce of the coast, as well as the 
inland trade, had been cut off. Whenever a vessel ap- 



Foreign Trading Companies. 37 

peared the Company despatched one of its own, with 
orders to follow her from port to port, undersell her, and 
drive her off the coast at any sacrifice. Mr, Simpson, 
who had charge of this part of the Company's business, 
declared that it was " resolved, even at the cost of a hun- 
dred thousand pounds, to expel the Americans from traffic 

on that coast." . . , ^ 

Mr T K Townsend, a naturalist who visited Oregon m 

,834 'wholly in the interests of his favorite science, and 
who remained there two years, after speaking of the many 
acts of kindness he had received from tl« agents of the 
Hudson Bay Company, says: " Travelers, and all who are 
not traders, are kindly treated ; but the moment the visitor 
is known to trade a beaver skin from an Indian, that mo- 
ment he is ejected from the community, and all communi- 
cation between him and the officers of the Company ceases. 
When Captain Wyeth* with his party arrived at Walla 
Walla Fort, on his passage down the Columbia, he was re- 
quired by the superintendent to promise that during his 
journey from thence to Vancouver-300 miles-he would 
not buy a beaver skin ; the functionary assuring him that 
unless he consented so to bind himself, he would send a 
party ahead of him to purchase every beaver skin at a price 
which he could not afford to pay." He further states that 
the Company had a large sum of money which it employed 
solely for the purpose " of opposing all who may come to 
interfere with their monopoly, by purchasing, at exorbi- 
tant prices, all the furs in the possession of the Indians, and 
thus forcing the settler to come to terms, or driving him 
from the country." 
* Mr. Towmend entered Oregon in company with Captain Wyeth. 



38 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

The evidence of Mr. Greenhow on this point is valuable 
as coming from the friendliest source. We can readily 
admit what he says about the kindness and hospitality 
shown by the Company to strangers in that country, so long 
as they did not in the remotest manner interfere with its 
commercial monopoly ; but even he admits that when '' any 
one unconnected with the Company attempted to hunt, or 
trap, or trade with the natives, then ail the force of the 
body was immediately turned toward him." 

Mr. Greenhow asserts also that the Company endeavored 
" to prevent the vessels of the United States from obtain- 
ing cargoes on the northwest coasts;" and that '' the pub- 
lications made by the directors and agents of the Hudson 
Bay Company evince the most hostile feelings toward the 
citizens of the United States, against whom every species 
of calumny is leveled in those works." 

A further method employed by the Company for retain- 
ing control of all the trade of the country was to place ar- 
bitrary and unjust restrictions on all commerce with the 
Indians. It fixed the prices to be paid for furs according 
to its own low and mercenary standard, and any deviation 
from this tariff was sure to incur the displeasure of the 
monopoly. Nor was this exacted alone of its own agents 
and employes. Its power was such that no person dared 
to oppose its arbitrary commands, as implicit obedience 
was the condition of its favor and protection. The policy 
thus pursued for purposes of trade would necessarily be an- 
tagonistic to permanent settlement of the country and rapid 
increase of the population. The Indians must be discour- 
aged in all their attempts to adopt civilized methods of 
life, as they would then abandon the pursuit of fur-bearing 



Foreign Trading Companies. 39 

animals ; and the entire country must be preserved in its 
wild, primitive condition, to furnish a suitable home for 
the fox, the bear, and the beaver. Sir Edward Fitzgerald 
thus summed it up: ''The Hudson Bay Company has en- 
tailed misery and destruction upon thousands throughout 

the country which is withering under its curse It 

has stopped the extension of civilization, and has excluded 
the light of religious truth." It was a despotic govern- 
ment, he declared, which had so used its monopoly of 
commerce and its power, "as to shut up the earth from the 
knowledge of man, and man from the knowledge of God." 

In its desire to discourage immigration from every quar- 
ter, but more especially from the United States, the Com- 
pany adopted two measures. The first was to represent the 
land as sterile, and not susceptible of profitable cultivation 
— *' an unbroken waste of sand deserts and impassable 
mountains, fit only for the beaver, the gray bear and the 
savage." The second was to discourage all immigration 
from the East, by representing that insurmountable ob- 
stacles were in the way — mountains and rivers that could 
not be crossed ; deserts where famine would surely ensue ; 
distances so great that the snows of a polar winter would 
overwhelm the immigrant before he could reach any settle- 
ment \ and hostile savages ever ready to plunder and mur- 
der the defenseless traveler. These representations de- 
terred most persons from attempts to penetrate the then 
unknown region ; a few who were more resolute and ven- 
turesome, and who set out upon the long journey, were 
turned back by the agents of the Company at its eastern 
forts. 

General Palmer says in his journal (p. 43) : ''While we 



40 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

remained at this place (Fort Hall), great efforts were made 
to induce the immigrants to pursue the route to California. 
The most extravagant tales were related respecting the dan- 
gers awaiting a trip to Oregon, and the difficulties and 
trials to be surmounted For instance, the cross- 
ings of Snake River, and the crossings of the Columbia and 
other smaller streams, were represented as being attended 

with great danger In addition to the above, it was 

asserted that three or four tribes of Indians in the middle 
regions had combined for the purpose of preventing our 
passage through their country. In ca'se we escaped de- 
struction at the hands of the savages, that a more fearful 
enemy — famine — would attend our march, as the distance 
was so great that winter would overtake us before making 
the Cascade mountains." 

Were it necessary to multiply evidence, statements could 
be produced from the Company's own agents, showing its 
fixed purpose to exclude American settlers. At this time, 
1832, let it be borne in mind that the Company exercised 
exclusive civil and commercial jurisdiction from the 
Russian settlement on the north to the Gulf of California 
on the south and from the Rocky Mountains on the east 
to the Pacific Ocean on the west, leaving but a narrow 
strip of neutral territory between the Rocky Mountains and 
the western borders of Missouri. 



CHAPTER V. 

PROTESTANT MISSIONS IN OREGON. 

SO much consideration has been given to the early history 
of Oregon because it has been thought desirable that 
the reader should have some knowledge of the condition 
of the country and its original inhabitants, and of the 
almost absolutely controlling influence exerted by the fur 
traders, particularly the Hudson Bay Company. Enough 
has been said to make plain the difficulties to be overcome 
by the missionaries who soon thereafter attempted to Chris- 
tianize and civilize the Indians. 

The Flatheads and Nez Perces having learned, either 
from members of the land expedition of Lewis and Clark 
or from American trappers who had visited them later, of 
the existence of a Supreme Being who alone was worthy of 
worship, and of a book from heaven for their instruction, 
earnestly desired that Christian teachers should be sent to 
expound more fully the Christian religion. After waiting 
long in vain for these religious guides, they at last resolved 
to send four of their number East, or, in their own expres- 
sive language, " to the rising sun," where, they were told, 
they could learn all about the All-Powerful Being and his 
Holy Word. The messengers made their way through 
forests, across rivers, and over prairies, encountering many 
hostile tribes, until at last they reached St. Louis, where 
they met General Clark, the Superintendent of Indian 

41 



42 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

Affairs for the entire Northwest, who had in 1805-6 ex- 
plored the region of country whence they came. Though 
kindly treated by the General, who supplied them with 
food and clothing, and took them to the theatre and other 
places of entertainment, yet, so far as known, nothing was 
done directly to aid them in securing the object of their 
perilous journey of over 3000 miles ; so that, when the time 
came for their return, they were sad at heart, as they after- 
ward told one of their missionaries, for they had not seen 
nor obtained "the Book from Heaven." 

It is not known how long they remained in St. Louis, 
but while there the older two died, leaving the others to 
go back to their people and report their mission unful- 
filled. Taking passage on a steamer of the American Fur 
Company, which was starting for the upper Missouri and 
to a post of the Company at the mouth of the Yellow- 
stone, they set out on their return journey. Only one 
reached his people, the other sickened and died on the 
way. Before quitting St. Louis, they made the usual cere- 
monial call upon General Clark, and in a farewell address 
one of them made known their sorrow and disappointment 
in the following pathetic words : 

"I came to you," said he, '* over a trail of many moons 
from the setting sun. You were the friend of my fathers, 
who have all gone the long way. I came with one eye 
partly opened, for more light for my people who sit in 
darkness. I go back with both eyes closed. How can I go 
back blind to my blind people ? I made my way to you with 
strong arms, through many enemies and strange lands, that 
I might carry back much to them. I go back with both 
arms broken and empty. The two fathers who came with 



Fi'otestant Missions in Oregon. 43 

me — the braves of many winters and wars — we leave asleep 
here by your great water. They were tired in many moons 
and their moccasins wore out. My people sent me to get 
the white man's Book of Heaven. You took me where 
you allow your women to dance, as we do not ours, and the 
Book was not there. You took me where they worship the 
Great Spirit with candles, and the Book was not there. 
You showed me the images of good spirits and pictures of 
the good land beyond, but the Book was not among them. 
I am going back the long, sad trail to my people of the 
dark land. You make my feet heavy with burdens of gifts, 
and my moccasins will grow old in carrying them, but the 
Book is not among them. When I tell my poor blind peo- 
ple, after one more snow, in the big council, that I did not 
bring the Book, no word will be spoken by our old men or 
by our young braves. One by one they will rise up and go 
out in silence. My people will die in darkness, and they 
will go on the long path to the other hunting-grounds. No 
white man will go with them and no white man's Book, to 
make the way plain. I have no more words." 

This sad complaint was heard by a young man who 
was present at the interview. He was deeply impressed 
with its painful ending. In writing to some friends in 
Pittsburg he mentioned the circumstances, and these 
friends in turn spoke to Mr. Catlin, the great naturalist 
and artist, who had just returned from one of his many 
trips to the Rocky Mountains.* Mr. Catlin wrote and 

* In his " Indian Letters " Mr. Catlin thus speaks of this mission : " When 
I first heard of it, I could scarcely believe it, but on consulting with Gen- 
eral Clark I was fully convinced of the fact They had been told that 

our religion was better than theirs, and that they would all be lost if they 
did not embrace it," 



44 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

inquired of General Clark as to the truth of the state- 
ment. His reply was: ''It is true. The sole object of 
their visit was to get the Bible." With this confirmation 
the letter was published, and the facts became known to 
the Christian public. 

The fact that these Indians were seeking a knowledge of 
the true God, and had traveled more than three thousand 
miles to procure a copy of the Bible, at once excited great 
interest in all the cliurches. The result was the establish- 
ment by the Missionary Board of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church of a mission in the Willamette valley in Oregon, 
under Rev. Jason Lee and his associates, in 1834; the ap- 
pointment of Rev. Samuel Parker and Dr. Marcus Whit- 
man, by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign 
Missions, to explore the country in 1835, and the establish- 
ment of a mission by the same Board in 1836. 

The first missionary party sent out by the Methodist 
Church consisted of Revs. Jason and Daniel Lee, Cyrus 
Shepard and P. L. Edwards. Under the escort furnished 
by Captain Nathaniel Wyeth of Massachusetts, who, in 
1832, had taken measures to establish trade in Oregon, 
they crossed the mountains and reached the plain of the 
Snake River, known subsequently as Fort Hall. From 
this point they proceeded with a party of Hudson Bay 
traders to Fort Nez Perce, and thence to Vancouver. 
They made their first permanent location about sixty miles 
from the mouth of the Willamette, near what is now called 
Wheatland, and at once made the necessary preparations 
to engage in the benevolent work that had brought them to 
the country. 

The mission was largely reinforced in 1837, and again 



Protestant Missions in Oregon. 45 

in 1839, when it consisted of twelve clergymen and their 
wives and families, with a large number of lay assistants — 
physicians, mechanics and farmers. These large reinforce- 
ments enabled them to establish additional mission sta- 
tions, and to do more than ever before both for Indians 
and for whites. This was the period of the mission's 
greatest prosperity, as to both educational and strictly mis- 
sionary labors. For various causes, which we cannot take 
space to discuss, the work languished, and in 1847 the 
mission was given up by the Methodist Board of Missions. 
Its principal school property was sold to the trustees of the 
Oregon Institute, and its station at the Dalles transferred to 
the American Board of Foreign Missions. 

Rev. Samuel Parker and Marcus Whitman, M.D., who 
had been appointed in 1835 to explore the country west of 
the Rocky Mountains with a view to engaging in missionary 
labors among the Indians, in due course reached the 
American rendezvous on Green River, in company with 
traders connected with the American Fur Company. 
Here they were met by a large number of Nez Perce 
Indians, who had come to trade and procure supplies, and 
with whom it was arranged that Mr. Parker should go to 
their own country, while Dr. Whitman should return to the 
States and report to the American Board ; and should the 
Board decide to establish a mission, procure associates and 
the material necessary for a station in the Nez Perce coun- 
try. Accordingly, in company with the friendly Indians, 
Mr. Parker continued his journey and his explorations until 
he reached the Columbia River, where canoes were taken to 
Vancouver. 

On the strength of Dr. Whitman's report, the American 



46 The Story of Marcus WJiitman. 

Board resolved to enter upon the work, and instructed 
Rev. Dr. and Mrs. Whitman, and Rev. H. H. and Mrs. 
Spalding to proceed the next year to Oregon for mission- 
ary labor among the Nez Perces. Provided with a two 
years' supply of such materials as they would require for a 
residence so many thousand miles away from civilization, 
the missionaries made their way to Liberty Landing, on 
the Missouri River, where they were joined by Mr. W. H. 
Gray, the secular agent of the expedition. 

A few days were spent at this point in procuring wagons 
and horses, and in packing goods for the journey. Messrs. 
Spalding and Gray then went with the train to Fort Leaven- 
worth, while Dr. Whitman and the ladies ascended the 
river by boat and joined them there. Here again the goods 
were rearranged ; and, while the train proceeded as before 
by land, the Doctor and the ladies were to continue up the 
river to Council Bluffs, the point from which the American 
Fur Company's caravan was to start that year. 

This part of the plan was frustrated by the failure of the 
Company's boat to land at the fort, and Dr. Whitman was 
compelled to send forward to Mr. Gray for horses in order 
to overtake the train. They were thus detained so long 
that the Fur Company's convoy had started, and was already 
six days out on the plains, before they arrived at Council 
Bluffs. Nothing was left for them but to press on after the 
caravan as rapidly as possible, and they overtook it at the 
Pav/nee village on the Loup Fork. The difficulties of such 
a chase will be appreciated if it is borne in mind that the 
missionary party were all strangers in the country, that 
there was no defined road, and frequently not even a trail 
or track except that of the buffalo. 



Protestant Missions in Oregon. 47 

From the Pawnee village the march was resumed to Fort 
Laramie, at the mouth of the Platte River, where the 
invariable custom had been to abandon all the wagons and 
transport the goods by packing them on horses and mules. 
But in order to secure greater comfort for the ladies. Dr. 
Whitman, at his urgent request, was permitted to retain 
one of his wagons, and the Company concluded to try the 
experiment of taking along a single cart. These pioneer 
vehicles were placed in the special charge of Dr. Whitman, 
who, by his fertility of resource and indomitable perse- 
verance, brought them through, thus demonstrating the 
practicability of a wagon road over the Rocky Mountains, 
even to the head-waters of the Columbia River. This was 
seven years before General Fremont's celebrated overland 
exploration which won him the appellation of the path- 
finder. 

The party having arrived at what was known then as 
Rock Independence, word was sent forward into the moun- 
tains as to the time when the caravan might be expected at 
the American rendezvous on the Green River. This infor- 
mation brought to the camp, two days before reaching the 
river, a party of ten Indians and four white men, who bore 
a letter from Mr. Parker, informing the missionaries of his 
safe arrival at Walla Walla, of the kindness of the Indians 
to him and their apparent friendliness to all whites. A 
day later, and when nearing the South Pass — the line that 
divides the waters of the Atlantic from those of the Pacific 
— the mission party were greeted by the sight of a company 
of Nez Perce Indians who had come to welcome them, in 
fulfillment of a promise made to Dr. Whitman the previous 
year, and to aid them in their journey. The chiefs were 



48 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

invited to partake of the hospitality of the missionaries, 
•"and here began the friendship of that nation, that bound 
it to the American people and government through all the 
conflicts of subsequent years." 

The rendezvous on Green River was to all intents a mili- 
tary camp, so constructed as to protect the goods and 
animals from thieves, and its inmates from being surprised 
by any sudden attack from hostile Indians. Three or four 
hundred rough mountain men and nearly 2000 Indians were 
gathered at this point. Among these the presence of the two 
ladies of the mission party — the first to brave the dangers 
of an overland journey — was a great novelty and appar- 
ently the source of no little gratification. 

Here the missionaries met Captain Wyeth, who, it will 
be remembered, formed the escort for the Methodist mis- 
sionaries of the previous year. He was on his return to 
the States, having been obliged to abandon the fur business 
and sell his improvements at Fort Hall to Mr. McLeod, 
the chief trader of the Hudson Bay Company — another 
instance of the uniform policy of that Company not to per- 
mit any interference with its monopoly. While the mission 
party were treated with consideration and kindness by the 
agents and men of the Company, and allowed to join the 
caravan in its onward march from this point, its members 
were given clearly to understand that the Company did not 
desire the presence of the mountain men, and that no 
encouragement would be held out to them to migrate to 
Oregon. If manual labor was needed for the erection of 
their houses or any other improvements at the contemplated 
mission stations, the Company preferred to furnish it, 
rather than have any of these men settle in the country. 



Protestant Missions in Oregon. 49 

Even at this early period there was a careful scrutiny of all 
proposed settlers ; as many being excluded as possible. 

From Green River the route of travel was nearly the 
same as the great overland route to Bear River and Soda 
Springs, and thence through the spurs of the mountains to 
the waters of Portneuf and to Fort Hall. Here all baggage 
was again reduced and repacked, and Dr. Whitman was 
strongly urged to abandon his wagon. This he refused to 
do, but compromised by reducing the wagon to two wheels. 
Though he found it a most difficult route to travel, yet he 
persevered and brought his cart with its precious load safely 
to its destination. 

From the camp on Green River, where a rest of ten days 
was taken, the missionaries traveled under the escort of a 
Hudson Bay party engaged for this purpose. After leav- 
ing the English Fort Hall, they reached Salmon Falls on 
the 2d of August ; thence they journeyed to Boise Fort and 
the Grand Ronde River and over the Blue Mountains to 
the Umatilla River. Descending the western slope of the 
mountains, they beheld the great valley of the Columbia 
spread out before them, with Mounts Hood and Adams, 
and the high peaks of the Cascade range looming up 
grandly in the distance. A few days later, in September, 
1836, a little more than four months from the time they 
left Missouri, the party reached Fort Walla Walla on the 
Columbia River, having traveled, as they estimated, a dis- 
tance of 2250 miles. 

Their reception by the Hudson Bay Company was 
friendly. At the fort, too, they found a Mr. Townsend, 
an American naturalist, who had spent two years in that 
region. From him they received not only many kind- 



5b The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

nesses but much information which was of great service to 
them in their subsequent intercourse with the agents of the 
Company, and also with the Indians. His advice to them 
was: ''The Company will be glad to have you in the 
country, and your influence to improve their native wives 
and children. As to the Indians you have come to teach, 
they do not want them to be any more enlightened. The 
Company now has absolute control over them, and that 
is all they require. Should the Company learn from Mr. 
Pambrun [their agent] or from any other source that you 
are here and do not comply with their regulations and 
treatment of the Indians, they will cut off your supplies, 
and leave you to perish among the Indians you are here to 
benefit." 

The missionaries had afterward many opportunities 
of proving the correctness of this judgment. 

Stopping here no longer than was required for rest 
and to prepare for the next stage of their journey, the mis- 
sion party took boats on the Columbia River, and reached 
Fort Vancouver September 12, 1836. On the way they 
encountered a severe wind storm, which came near dashing 
the boats to pieces, and compelled them to remain in a 
miserable camp for three days and nights. At Vancouver, 
they were also cordially welcomed by the representative of 
the Hudson Bay Company, and their stay of a fortnight 
was made as pleasant as possible. 

At the earnest advice of the Company, the ladies re- 
mained at the fort, while the gentlemen of the party re- 
turned to Walla Walla to select the mission stations and to 
build houses for the winter — the governor supplying from 
the Company's stores the articles needed in building, and 



Protestant Missiofis in Oregon. 51 

assuring the party that it was a great pleasure to aid them 
in their mission work. 

At this period there were, besides the projected mission 
of the x\merican Board, two mission stations of the Metho- 
dist Episcopal Church located at favorable points to reach 
and Christianize other tribes of Indians. It was not the 
purpose of the respective Boards that the established mis- 
sions or the one about to be established should be in any 
way dependent upon the Hudson Bay Company for supplies, 
as ample provision had been made for their necessities 
until such times as they could raise the means for their own 
subsistence. This of necessity engaged the first attention 
of the newcomers, and with the supplies forwarded from the 
East they were soon quite independent of the Company ; 
but such was the power of this commercial monopoly, and 
so important its good will, that our missionaries deemed 
it expedient to accept aid when it was proffered them. 

In choosing locations for their missions, Messrs. Whit- 
man and Spalding were careful not to interfere with the 
work already begun by their Methodist brethren. By win- 
ter they had their buildings ready for their families— Dr. 
Whitman at Waiilatpu, December, 1837, among the Cayuse 
Indians, and Mr. Spalding at Lapwai, November, 1837, on 
Clearwater River, among the Nez Perces. At once they 
began their arrangements for planting their gardens and 
preparing for spring crops, setting an example to the 
Indians by their industry during the week, and on the Sab- 
bath giving them such religious instruction as they were 
capable of imparting with their then imperfect knowledge 
of the Indian dialects. The wives of the missionaries 
spent a large part of their time in teaching the children. 



52 The Story of Marcus li^ittman. 

While the missionaries were thus engaged at their re- 
spective stations, Mr. Gray, the agent of the mission, was 
sent to Vancouver to procure the requisite spring supplies, 
and to make necessary preparations for his return to the 
States to secure assistance for the mission. In both respects 
he was successful. The American Board sent back with 
Mr. Gray, who was accompanied by his wife, three other 
missionaries and their wives — Revs. E. Walker, C. Eells, 
and A. B. Smith, and a young man by the name of Rogers, 
thus making an addition ot eight members to the working 
force. These all arrived at Dr. Whitman's station in Sep- 
tember, 1838. The mission of the American Board now 
numbered thirteen in all, and the Methodist mission six- 
teen. The latter was located in the Willamette Valley, 
with an out-station at the Dalles ; the former maintained 
three stations at Waiilatpu, Lapwai and at Tshimakain.* 

Soon after the reinforcement of the American Board's 
mission, two Jesuit missionaries, Revs. F. A. Blanchet and 
Demerse, arrived at Walla Walla in the boats of the Hud- 
son Bay Company, making Vancouver their headquarters, 
and visiting its different posts and stations with the trans- 
portation facilities furnished them by the Company. 
Almost at once the Indians began to exhibit a prejudice 
against the Protestant missionaries. The priests informed 
them that the Protestants were not teaching a true religion ; 
and that eventually they intended to take their lands and 
property from them and occupy the country themselves. 
Willing assistance was lent to this propaganda by the 
agents and other servants of the Company, some of whom 
became catechists to the Indians in the interest of the 

* Now known as Walker's Prairie. 



Protestant Missions in Oregon. 53 

Roman Catholic faith, and by the resident half-breeds, de- 
scendants of Frenchmen who had married Indian wives, 
and who were bigoted Romanists, and as unscrupulous as 
bigoted. 

Meanwhile the Protestant missionaries were doing all 
they could to improve both the material and the spiritual 
condition of the Indians— teaching them to cultivate their 
lands and occupy them permanently, instructing their 
children from books already prepared in the Indian tongue, 
and on the Sabbath inculcating the principles of the gos- 
pel. In their annual report to the Board at Boston, in 
1838, the missionaries, represent the Nez Perce language 
as so easy of acquisition that, within four or five months 
after their settlement in the country, they were able to 
hold intercourse with the Indians in it on all common 
topics; and, further, that "since that time they have 
formed an alphabet and prepared a small elementary book 
in it; other books are in a state of preparation." The 
same report stated that the Indians of neighboring 
tribes were eager for missionaries, and that Mr. Gray was 
sent East for helpers, the opinion of the mission being 
that fifty missionaries and assistants were needed. In 
1842 the Missionary Herald said: ''A second book in 
the Nez Perce language, of fifty-six pages, has been pre- 
pared and 800 copies printed." A printing press had 
been procured from the Hawaiian Islands* and set up, 
upon which the small books required for the schools at 

* A gift from Rev. H. Bingham's church at Honolulu ; with materials 
accompanying it was worth $450. Mr. E. O. Hall, a printer, came along 
with the press, and that fall printed in the Nez Perce language the first 
book printed west of the Rocky Mountains. 



54 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

the stations were printed, and these were gratuitously dis- 
tributed to all who were willing to receive them. 

The Roman Catholic priests in the meantime did all in 
their power to check the influence of these Protestant 
books and to thwart the persistent and self-denying labors 
of the missionaries. Their resort was to pictures osten- 
sibly setting forth the great danger of heretical books and 
teachings. Other forms of opposition are referred to by 
the missionaries in their reports to the Board at Boston. 
Writing, in 1840, of the Romish priests who came from 
Canada, they say: "Their avowed object was to minister 
to the Canadian Papists in the employ of the Hudson Bay 
Company. But having been furnished with interpreters 
and facilities for traveling, they visited Fort Colville dur- 
ing the summer of the next year and subsequently went 
down to Walla Walla, where they assembled the Indians, 
spoke against the missionaries, said that themselves were 
the only men of God in the country, and persuaded a 
number of the Indians to receive baptism from them." 
Again, the annual report for 1844 states that ^'the papal 
teachers and other opposers of the mission appear to have 
succeeded in making them [the Indians] believe that the 
missionaries ought to furnish them with food and clothing 
and supply all their wants. Hence they make this claim 
and are jealous and faultfinding." 

From this time forward there *'was also a marked 
change in the feelings of most of the gentlemen of the 
Company" toward the Protestant missionaries; nor is it 
difficult to assign a sufficient cause for this change if we 
bear in mind the paramount and controlling purpose of 
the Company. If the Indians became Christianized and 



Protestant Missions in Oregon. 55 

settled down and tilled their lands, they could not be 
utilized in catching the fur animals and thus add to the 
profits of its business. Hence, as a matter of policy en- 
tirely consonant with such a purpose, its agents favored 
the priests, who were subservient to its wishes and who 
contented themselves with teaching the Indians from a 
catechism for a few days or weeks at most, sprinkling 
them with holy water and then passing on to another 
place, to go through the same ceremonies, all of which 
left the Indians the vagabond wanderers they had been 
from the beginning, dependent for a living upon the chase 
and their traps. 

The jealousy and unfriendliness of which we have just 
spoken was not exhibited toward the Protestant mission- 
aries alone, but toward all persons wishing to settle in and 
improve the country, and especially to Americans. Even 
a party of forty English, Scotch and Canadian-French 
families who immigrated in 1841 from the Red River set- 
tlement, having been invited to locate in the Puget Sound 
district by the governor of the Company in order to con- 
trol and outnumber the American settlers, complained bit- 
terly of the treatment ; and the more intelligent of the 
number removed to other districts so as to be no longer 
subject to the arbitrary and oppressive regulations of the 
Company. 

The conflicting interests of the Hudson Bay Company 
and the actual settlers led at times to hostilities between 
the Americans and such Indians as were wholly under the 
influence of the Company's agents, and resulted in the 
destruction of property and the massacre of a number of 
the whites. It was publicly charged at the time that the 



56 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

Indians were incited by the Company's employes to plun- 
der and '* murder all outside venturers upon their trading 
localities," the whites being regarded in all instances as 
the aggressors. ''It has always been the policy of the 
Hudson Bay Company," says Hines' Oregon,'^ ''to mo- 
nopolize the trade of those immense regions in North 
America. Another feature of the policy of the Company 
is the course they have pursued in relation to the colon- 
izing of the country. They have always been opposed to 
its settlement by any people except such as, by a strict 
subjection to the Company, would become subservient to 
their wishes. They wished to preserve the arable land 
for their superannuated employes, whom they kept under 
their absolute control, and wanted to retain them where 
they could use them to advantage." The same writer 
speaks of the inactivity of business by reason of " the 
domineering policy of the Hudson Bay Company." 

Like testimony is given in Gray's History of Oregon :\ 
" The unparalleled energy and success attending the efforts 
of the missionaries among these two powerful migratory 
tribes (Cayuses and Nez Perces) excited the jealousy of the 
Hudson Bay Company, and caused them to encourage the 
Jesuits to come to the country and locate themselves im- 
mediately in the vicinity of those missions, and use every 
possible influence to dissuade the Indians from attending 
the missionary schools, cultivating their little farms or at- 
tending in the least to any instruction, except such as was 
given by the priests, when they came to the Hud?on Bay 
Company's posts for trade. The Jesuit missionary teach- 

^- Pp. 385. 386. 
t P. 598. 



Protestant Missions in Orcf^on. 57 

ing did not interfere with the roving and hunting life of 
the Indians, while tlie plan of settling and civilizing them 
proposed, and in a measure carried out, by the American 
missionaries did directly interfere with the Company's fur 
trappers and hunters. Every Indian that became a settler 
or farmer had no occasion to hunt for furs to get his sup- 
plies." 

Another valuable witness is Mr. Swan, who says : * "The 
officers of the Company also sympathized with their serv- 
ants, and a deadly feeling of hatred has existed between 

these officers and the American immigrants There 

is not a man among them who would not be glad to have 
had every American immigrant driven out of the country." 

* Swan's Works, p. 381. 



CHAPTER VI. 

PROTESTANT MISSIONS IN OREGON, CONTINUED. 

DURING all this period, and up to the year 1842, the 
missionaries of the American Board were prosecut- 
ing their work with commendable fidelity, and, consider- 
ing the unfavorable influences which they were obliged to 
encounter, with remarkable success. 

At the opening of the year 1839, the Indians gathered in 
great numbers around the mission stations then occupied, 
and manifested remarkable docility, both in receiving re- 
ligious instruction and in adopting the habits of civilized 
life. 

T]\Q Missionary Herald oi 1842, represents the mission 
as prosperous, the schools as large, and the people as 
attending regularly on religious instruction. But reference 
is made in the Annual Report to the dissatisfaction of some 
of the Indians, which interfered with the prosperity of the 
mission, and tended to the suspension of the work of grace 
that had so largely prevailed. ''The Indians in the vicin- 
ity of the station (Waiilatpu), instigated by a papal Indian 
of one of the tribes east of the mountains, had treated Dr. 
Whitman and Mr. Gray with a good deal of insolence and 
abuse, destroying some property, and demanding payment 
for the land, timber, fuel, and water which the missionaries 
used, and threatening to drive them from the country." 

58 



Protestant Missions in Oregon. 59 

*' About this time two Romish priests* arrived from 
Canada, and began to travel extensively among the In- 
dians, and to baptize some of them; and by introducing 
the papal ceremonies, and by misrepresentations, seemed 
likely to interfere to some extent with the success of the 
mission." Still "the Indians were generally favorably 
disposed, and from eighty to one hundred families were 
located and cultivating the land." 

Equally emphatic evidence is borne by Mr. Gray, who, 
as secular agent of the mission, had every opportunity for 
ascertaining all the facts. He says, ''Before I left the 
Whitman station in 1842, there were 322 Indian families 
among the Cayuse and Nez Perce tribes that had com- 
menced to cultivate, and were beginning to enjoy the fruits 
of their little farms. About 100 of them were talking 
about locating, and were looking for places and material 
for building themselves more permanent houses. We have 
never doubted for a moment that the Cayuse, Nez Perce, 
and Spokan tribes would in twenty-five years from the time 
the missions of the American Board were located among 
them (if let alone by the Hudson Bay Company and 
Romish priests), have become a civilized, industrious, and 
happy Chiistian people, ready to enter as honorable and 
intelligent citizens of our American republic." f 

The English had possession of Oregon at this time as 
traders and settlers, and by their representations and well- 
laid plans were doing all they could to discourage immi- 
gration from the Eastern States. As intelligent and obser- 
vant persons, the American missionaries could not fail to 

* Messrs. Blanchet and Demerse. 
■j- Gray's History of Oregon, p. 578. 



6o The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

discern their purposes; nor could they be expected, as 
patriots, to look on indifferently while another nation was 
endeavoring to acquire possession of this valuable territory 
by actual occupation. 

That such was the English policy became more and more 
apparent to all Americans, and particularly to so careful 
and interested an observer as Dr. Whitman, who was soon 
convinced that the best if not the only way to frustrate the 
scheme, was to induce a still larger immigration of settlers 
from the United States to Oregon than could possibly be 
introduced by the Hudson Bay Company, with the coop- 
eration of Sir George Simpson, the governor. His con- 
victions on this subject were greatly strengthened during a 
professional visit which he paid in September, 1S42, to 
Fort Walla Walla. Here he met at dinner the officers of 
the fort, a number of the chief traders of the Company, 
and some Jesuit priests who had recently arrived and were 
on their way to the interior. While the party were at table 
an express messenger arrived, bringing news that a large 
colony of immigrants from the Red River country had 
succeeded in crossing the mountains, and were at Fort Col- 
ville, some three hundred and fifty miles up the Columbia. 
This announcement was hailed with great joy by most of 
those present, one young priest becoming so enthusiastic 
that he sprang to his feet with the cry : '' Hurrah for Ore- 
gon ! America is too late ! We have got the country !" 

All that Dr. Whitman saw and heard during his stay at the 
fort but served to convince him more fully that the Com- 
pany had not only invited these Red River Scotch and En- 
glish immigrants and arranged for them to come and settle 
in Oregon, but that a further part of the plan was to have 



Protestant Missions in Oregon. 6i 

Governor Simpson visit Washington and secure a final dis- 
position of the question of the boundaries, on the basis of 
the most numerous and permanent settlements in the coun- 
try. He at once resolved to prevent the execution of this 
scheme. It took him only a few hours to reach his own 
station, and before dismounting from his horse he briefly 
sketched the English plot to his brethren of the mission, 
ending with the announcement : " I am going to cross the 
Rocky Mountains and reach Washington this winter, God 
carrying me through, and bring out an immigration over 
the mountains next season, or this country is lost." 

His associates, when they had recovered from their sur- 
prise, proceeded to point out the great perils of such a 
winter journey of five or six months, from cold, starvation, 
or falling into the hands of the savages, but his resolution 
could not be shaken. Within twenty -four hours he started, 
accompanied by Mr. A. L. Lovejoy, who had recently 
arrived at Waiilatpu with the immigration of that year. 
They took a circuitous route by way of Fort Hall, Taos 
and Sante Fe, and thence to Bent's Fort on the Arkansas 
River. Here Mr. Lovejoy stopped for the winter, having 
become exhausted from toil and exposure, while Dr. Whit- 
man, in spite of intense suffering from snow-storms, ex- 
treme cold and lack of food, continued until he reached 
St. Louis in February, 1843. Thence he made his way to 
Washington, arriving on the 3d of March, precisely five 
months from the time of starting. 

No account of this journey was left by Dr. Whitman, 
and in our day it would be almost impossible to compre- 
hend the perils and privations of such an undertaking. As 
an indication of its many exigencies, we subjoin thrilling 



62 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

incidents from the narrative of the journey, compiled by 
Rev. H. H. Spalding from statements subsequently made 
by Dr. Whitman and Mr. Lovejoy : 

*'0n that terrible 13th of January, 1843, when so many 
in all parts of our country froze to death, the Doctor, 
against the advice of his Mexican guide, left his camp in a 
deep gorge of the mountains of New Mexico, in the morn- 
ing, to pursue his journey. But on reaching the divide, the 
cold becoming so intense, and the animals becoming actually 
maddened by the driving snows, the Doctor saw his peril, 
and attempted to retrace his steps, and, if possible, to find 
his camp, as the only hope of saving their lives. But the 
drifting snow had totally obliterated every trace, and the 
air becoming almost as dark as night by the maddening 
storm, the Doctor saw that it would be impossible for any 
human being to find camp, and, commending himself and 
his distant wife to his covenant- keeping God, he gave him- 
self, his faithful guide, and animals, up to their snowy grave, 
which was fast closing about them. Suddenly the guide, 
observing the ears of one of the mules intently bent for- 
ward, sprang upon him, giving him the reins, exclaiming, 
* This mule will find the camp if he can live to reach it.' 
The Doctor mounted another, and followed. The faithful 
animal kept down the divide a short distance, and then 
turned square down the steep mountain. Through deep 
snowdrifts, over frightful precipices, down, down, he 
pushed, unguided and unurged, as if he knew that the lives 
of the two men and the fate of the great expedition de- 
pended upon his endurance and his faithfulness. Entering 
the thick timber he stopped suddenly over a bare spot, and 
as the Doctor dismounted — the Mexican was too far gone — 



Protestant Missions in Oregon. 63 

he beheld the very fireplace of their morning camp ! Two 
brands of fire were yet alive and smoking, and plenty of 
timber in reach. The buffalo hides had done much to 
protect the Doctor, and providentially he could move 
about and collect dry limbs, and soon had a rousiiig fire. 
The guide revived, but both he and the Doctor were badly 
frozen. They remained in this secluded hole in the moun- 
tains several days, till the cold and the storm abated. 

'^ At another time, with another guide, on the head- waters 
of the Arkansas, after traveling all day in a terrible storm, 
they reached a small river for camp, but without a stick of 
wood anywhere to be had except on the other side of the 
stream, which was covered with ice too thin to support a 
man erect. The storm cleared away, and the night bid 
fair to be intensely cold ; besides, they must have fire to 
prepare bread and food. The Doctor took his axe in one 
hand and a willow stick in the other, laid himself upon 
the thin ice, and spreading his legs and arms, he worked 
himself over on his breast, cut his wood and slid it over, 
and returned in the same way. 

" That was the last time the Doctor enjoyed the luxury 
of his axe — so indispensable at that season of the year, in 
such a country. That night a wolf poked his nose under 
the foot of the bed where the axe had been placed for safe- 
keeping, and took it off for a leather string that was 
wrapped around the split helve." 

Mr. Lovejoy, the companion of Dr. Whitman, has given 
an account of their perilous trip from Fort Hall to Fort 
Bent. In it he vividly d-escribes their terrible sufferings 
from cold and snow, when crossing the mountains : 

*' From Fort Hall to Fort Uintah we met with terribly 



64 The Story of Marcus IVJiitman. 

severe weather. The deep snows caused us to lose much 
time. Here we took a new guide for Fort Uncompahgre, 
on Grand River, in Spanish country. Passing over high 
mountains, we encountered a terrible snow-storm, that 
compelled us to seek shelter in a dark defile, and although 
we made several attempts, we were detained some ten days. 
When we got upon the mountains we wandered for days, 
until the guide declared he was lost, and would take us no 
further. This was a terrible blow to the Doctor, but he 
determined not to give up, and went back to the Fort for 
another guide, I remaining with the horses, feeding them 
on cotton-wood bark. The seventh day he returned. We 
reached, as our guide informed us. Grand River, 600 yards 
wide, which was frozen on either side about one-third. 
The guide regarded it too dangerous to cross; but the 
Doctor, nothing daunted, was the first to take the water. 
He mounted his horse, and the guide and I pushed them 
off the ice into the boiling, foaming stream. Away they 
went, completely under water, horse and all, but directly 
came up, and after buffeting the waves and foaming cur- 
rent, made for the ice on the opposite side, a long way 
down the stream. The Doctor leaped upon the ice and 
soon had his noble animal by his side. The guide and I 
forced in the pack animals, and followed the Doctor's ex- 
ample, and were soon drying our frozen clothes by a com- 
fortable fire. 

'' We reached Taos in about thirty days. We suffered 
from intense cold, and from want of food were compelled 
to use the flesh of dogs, mules, or such other animals as 
came within our reach. We remained about fifteen days, 
and left for Bent's Fort, which we reached January 3d. 



Protestant Missions in Oregon. 65 

The Doctor left there on the 7th, at which time we parted, 
and I did not meet him again till in July, above Laramie, 
on his way to Oregon with a train of emigrants." 

We are fortunate in having an account of the object of 
Dr. Whitman's visit to the East, and of his personal 
appearance on his arrival at St. Louis, from the pen of 
Rev. William Barrows, D.D,, who chanced to be a guest in 
the same house : * 

*'The announcement of the man in the little city of 
twenty thousand came as a surprise and a novelty. In 
those times it was a rare possibility for one to come up in 
midwinter from Bent's Fprt or Santa Fe, much more from 
Fort Hall and the Columbia. The Rocky Mountain men, 
trappers and traders, the adventurers in New Mexico, and 
the contractors for our military posts, gathered about Dr. 
Whitman for fresh news from those places of interest 

" But the Doctor was in great haste, and could not delay 
to talk of beaver, and Indian goods, and wars, and reser- 
vations, and treaties. He had questions, not answers. 
Was the Ashburton treaty concluded ? Did it cover the 
Northwest? Where, and what, and whose did it leave 
Oregon? .... Then he had other questions for his St. 
Louis visitors. Was the Oregon question under discussion 
in Congress? Would anything important be settled be- 
fore the adjournment on the 4th of March? Could he 
reach Washington before the adjournment? He must 
leave at once, and he went." 

The Doctor, according to the same account, " was of 
medium height, more compact than spare, with a stout 
shoulder, and large head not much above it, covered with 

* Oregon, p. 174. 



66 The Story of Marcus JV/uiman. 

stiff, iron-gray hair, while his face carried all the moustache 
and whiskers that four months had been able to put upon 
it." His dress consisted of "coarse fur garments and 
vesting, and buckskin breeches. He wore a buffalo coat, 
with a head-hood for emergencies in taking a storm or a 
bivouac nap. What with heavy fur leggings and boot- 
moccasins, his legs filled up well his Mexican stirrups. If 
memory is not at fault with me, his entire dress when on 
the street did not show one square inch of woven fabric." 

Dr. Whitman regarded his business as of so much import- 
ance that he could not be persuaded to give more than a 
few days to needed rest, or to the courtesies pressed upon 
him. He must hasten to Washington, lest delay jeopardize 
the object of his journey. Parting from his friends at St. 
Louis, he took stage for the seat of government, which he 
reached on the 3d of March, 1843, ^^^^ soon secured an 
interview with the President and other public men. 

I am aware that some writers have endeavored to con- 
vince the public that the chief object of Dr. Whitman's 
winter journey to the East was not to induce immigration 
to Oregon nor to convey such information to our govern- 
ment as was needed in order to settle aright the question of 
boundaries between Great Britain and the United States. 
They claim that his main purpose was to visit Boston, in 
order to induce the American Board to countermand an 
order sent out that year on account of the hostile disposi- 
tion shown by a few Indians, discontinuing two of the sta- 
tions, and thus concentrating the missionaries for greater 
safety ; and in confirmation they adduce the fact that his 
missionary associates met together in order to discuss this 
very question the month previous to his leaving for the East. 



Protestant Missions in Oregon. 67 

We know of no better way of getting at the impelling 
motive in this case than from the testimony of those who 
were co-laborers of Dr. Whitman at the time, and who 
heard from his own lips his reasons for the journey. These 
all unite in stating that his main object was to save to 
the United States the country west of* the Rocky Moun- 
tains ; that he went to Washington before he visited Bos- 
ton, and that he obtained a promise from officers of the 
government that the pending negotiations respecting the 
boundary line should not be concluded until it could be 
shown whether or not his proposed immigration could 
reach the Columbia River with their animals and wagons. 

Of the meeting at Waiilatpu, Rev. Gushing Eells, an 
associate missionary, who was present, gives the following 
account: "The mission was called together to consider 
whether or not their approval would be given to the pro- 
posed undertaking — Dr. Whitman's unyielding purpose to 
go east, which he had formed. At the commencement 
there was decided opposition, which yielded only when it 
became evident he would go. According to the under- 
standing of'the members of the mission, the all-controlling 
object of Dr. Whitman was to make a desperate effort to 
save this country to the United States." The same writer 
adds that, satisfied of the movement of the English to gain 
possession of the country by the introduction of actual set- 
tlers, and learning from Mr. Lovejoy, who arrived with the 
immigrants of this year, somewhat of the condition of 
Oregon matters at Washington, " Dr. Whitman saw that one 
way to counteract this movement was to induce a still 
larger immigration of Americans to come to the country. 
He also proposed to attend to business connected with the 



68 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

mission, though this was a subordinate affair, and it alone 
would not have induced him to go east." 

This evidence, confirmed as it is by the testimony of 
other members of the conference, must prove conclusive to 
every candid mind, and settle this question, which indeed 
has only been raised within a few years and since most of 
the participants in the stirring scenes have passed away. 

At Washington, Dr. Whitman obtained an early hearing 
from the chief officers of the government. He still wore 
his strange attire of buffalo and buckskin, and the evidences 
on his person of the sufferings he had endured from cold 
and hunger helped to impress all he met with his sincerity 
and earnestness. President Tyler, on his tendering some 
credentials, is said to have remarked: ''Dr. Whitman, 
your frozen face and general appearance are all the evidence 
I want that you have just arrived from Oregon." 

That his presence in Washington was opportune, that the 
information which he brought relative to our possessions on 
the Pacific was most valuable, cannot be questioned. Sun- 
dry ill-informed and injudicious friends, however, since his 
death, have made unwarranted claims as to the influence 
he exerted upon the questions then under consideration, 
respecting the boundary line west of the Rocky Mountains. 
They are at fault not only as to dates, but as to the treaties 
themselves ; and they attribute motives and acts to Daniel 
Webster which he expressly repudiated, and to which he 
could not have been a party. For example, a writer in the 
New York Eveniftg Post says: ''We presume it is not 
generally known how near we came to losing, through ex- 
ecutive incompetence, our just title to the whole immense 
region lying west of the Rocky Mountains. Neither has 



Protestant Missions in Oregon. 69 

due honor been accorded to the brave and patriotic man 
(Dr. Whitman) through whose herculean exertions this great 
loss and sacrifice was prevented. 

''Reaching Washington, he sought an interview with 
President Tyler and Daniel Webster, then Secretary of 
State, and unfolded to them distinctly what was going on. 
Here he learned that a treaty was almost ready to be signed, 
in which all this northwestern territory was to be given up 
to England, and we were to have in compensation greater 
facilities in catching fish. Dr. Whitman labored to con- 
vince Mr. Webster that he was the victim of false represen- 
tations with regard to the character of the region, and told 
him he intended to return to Oregon with a train of immi- 
grants. Mr. Webster, looking him fully in the eye, asked him 
if he would pledge himself to conduct a train of immigrants 
there in wagons. He promised that he would. 'Then,' 
said Mr. Webster, 'this treaty shall be suppressed.' Dr. 
Whitman, in coming on, had fixed upon certain rallying- 
pomts where immigrants might assemble to accompany 
him on his return. He found nearly 1000 ready for the 
journey. After long travel, they reached Fort Hall, a 
British military station, and the commandant undertook to 
frighten the immigrants by telling them that it was not 
possible for them to go through with wagons; but Dr. 
Whitman reassured them, and led them through to the 
Columbia, and the days of the supremacy of the Hudson 
Bay Company were numbered."* 

In Gray's History of Oregon we find the statement : " It 
(the Ashburton treaty) was nearly ready to be signed, but 

*This treaty was concluded in August, 1842, and related exclusively to 
the boundary line east of the Rocky Mountains. 



70 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

Dr. Whitman made such representations respecting the 
value of the country, and its accessibility, that Mr. Web- 
ster promised the treaty should be suppressed if the Doctor 
would conduct a caravan through to Oregon on his return 
journey ; which he engaged to do, and had already made 
his arrangements for doing." 

As late as 1879, ^ writer in the Atlantic Monthly ^3X6. : 
'' Mr. Webster was at one time disposed to cede the valley 
of the Columbia River for the free right to fish on the 
British colonial coasts of the North Atlantic, Governor 
Simpson of the Hudson Bay Company having represented 
Oregon as worthless for agricultural purposes, and only 
valuable for its furs. Just then Dr. Whitman arrived at 
Washington to plead for the retention of Oregon. ' But 
you are too late, Doctor,' said Mr. Webster, 'for we are 
about to trade off Oregon for the cod fisheries. ' The Doc- 
tor soon convinced the Secretary of State, however, that 
the valley of the Columbia was of great value, and it was 
retained." 

Similar statements have been made by other writers, 
notably in the Cojigregationalist of Boston, and in the 
Ladies'' Repository for 1868, by Rev. H. K. Hines, of Fort 
Vancouver, Washington Territory ; but we are confident 
they cannot be substantiated. 

The real facts seem to be that Dr. Whitman made this re- 
markable journey in the winter of 1842-43, reaching Wash- 
ington, March 3, 1843. The Ashburton treaty was con- 
cluded in August, 1842, and had reference only to the 
boundary line east of the Rocky Mountains, extending 
from the Bay of Fundy to the Lake of the Woods. Mr. 
Robert Greenhow^ in his history of Oregon and California, 



Protestant Missions in Oregon. 71 

says : ** No allusion was made to any portion of the conti- 
nent west of the Rocky Mountains."* 

President Tyler sent a message to Congress, December 7, 
1842, in which he urged that every effort should be resorted 
to by the two governments to settle their respective claims. 
It was left out of the treaty of 1842, because it would lead 
to a protracted discussion, and prejudice other more press- 
ing matters. Mr. Greenhow further states, that "nothing 
was said on that subject (Oregon) in the British Parliament 
before 1843." I^^- Whitman's representations to Mr. 
Webster could not, therefore, have influenced the terms of 
the Ashburton treaty, . however greatly they may have 
enlightened our statesmen as to the value of our Pacific 
coast possessions. 

The northwestern boundary line was settled by Secretary 
Buchanan and Hon. Richard Packenham, in June, 1846. 
Negotiations were commenced in August, 1844, when Hon. 
John C. Calhoun had charge of the State Department. 
Great excitement was caused by our claims to the territory 
as far as 54° 40' north latitude, and it was feared that a 
war would be the consequence. 

While Mr. Webster did not negotiate this treaty, he was 
familiar with all the questions relative to the boundary line 
between the two countries west of the Rocky Mountains. 
They had been under discussion during his term of office. 
This is clear from President Tyler's message already re- 
ferred to, and from the correspondence of Lord Ashburton 
with Mr. Webster in July, 1842, in the course of which he 
writes : " There is a further question of disputed boundary 
between Great Britain and the United States, called the 
* P. 78. 



72 The Story of Marcus Whitman, 

northwest boundary, about which we have had some confer- 
ences." 

Now there is every reason to believe that Dr. Whitman's 
representations, and particularly his success in safely con- 
ducting nearly looo immigrants, with their 200 wagons, 
across the mountains to the Columbia River in the sum- 
mer of 1843, ^^^ ^ v^^y important and confirmatory in- 
fluence upon Mr. Webster and all other public men of that 
time. That they were in need of such information as 
Dr. Whitman was capable of imparting may be seen from 
Mr. Webster's speech in the Senate, April, 1846, in de- 
fense of the Ashburton treaty of 1842, which had been 
bitterly assailed: '*We have heard a great deal lately," 
says Mr. Webster, "of the immense value and importance 
of the Columbia River and its navigation ; but I will 
undertake to say that, for all purposes of human use, the 
St. John is worth a hundred times as much as the Colum- 
bia is or ever will be." 

While the above extract shows that Mr. Webster had no 
proper conception as to the future value of our possessions 
on the Pacific coast, there is no evidence to sustain the 
charge that he was ever disposed to trade off any part of 
them for fishing privileges on the Atlantic. It is expressly 
stated in his own works that ''the government of the 
United States has never offered any line south of 49° with 
the navigation of the Columbia, and it never will." * He 
asserted our right to the Columbia River in virtue of Gray's 
discovery in 1792. 

While, then, we cannot admit all that has been claimed 
in this matter for Dr. Whitman, it is undeniably true that 
* Vol. V, p. 73. 



Protestant Missions in Oregon. 73 

he rendered a most important service to his country, in 
diffusing correct information with respect to the climate, 
soil, and natural resources and capabilities of our north- 
western territory, in correcting the misrepresentations of 
English officials and the Hudson Bay Company ; and espe- 
cially in demonstrating the practicability of the overland 
route to immigrants, by the large numbers that safely ar- 
rived in Oregon the following year. Surely his patri- 
otic labors and his character merit better treatment from 
his government than they have ever yet received. Both 
have long rested under the obloquy heaped upon them by 
Jesuit priests and their agents, and this in an official docu- 
ment — House Executive Document No. 38 — published by 
authority of the Thirty-fifth Congress.* 

* Since the above was written, Rev. Dr. Barrows has given to the public, 
in the main, a discriminating article on the great service Dr. Whitman 
rendered his country on the Oregon question. We are pleased to see that, 
after a careful investigation, he bears testimony to the correctness of the 
facts here stated. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE IMMIGRATION OF 1 843. 

OUR pioneer missionary having explained to many of 
the principal men at Washington the plans and 
purposes of the Hudson Bay Company and the British 
government, which contemplated the permanent posses- 
sion of the country, and having clearly showed that this 
was the motive for all the false representations as to its 
agricultural, mineral and commercial value, he announced 
his intention to return to Oregon overland in the early 
summer with a large party of immigrants, taking along 
with him their wagons and horses. Then he visited Bos- 
ton and reported to the American Board of Commissioners 
for Foreign Missions. He afterwards complained that 
the Board had failed to appreciate his patriotic motives, 
and that they also found fault with him for leaving his 
station without permission from the Prudential Committee 
at Boston. 

Having disposed of what little private property he pos- 
sessed in the East, Dr. Whitman speedily made his way to 
Missouri to join the large party of immigrants who were 
about to start on that long and dangerous journey. Under 
the circumstances, he naturally felt a great responsibility 
for its safety and success, as it was partly through his per- 
sonal representations the previous spring, when on his way 

74 



The Immigration of 184J. 75 

to Washington, and through reading a pamphlet in which 
he had set forth the practicability of the route and the 
desirableness of the climate, soil and productions, that 
many members of the party had decided to make Oregon 
their future home. 

Meanwhile, more and better information respecting 
Oregon had turned the attention of the people of what 
was then the far West to its desirableness as a place of 
residence. This information was furnished by such books 
as Rev. Mr. Parker's and Irving's Astoria and by the re- 
ports and debates of Congress. Public meetings at Alton 
and Springfield, 111., had increased the interest and led 
to concerted measures for removal; so that Dr. Whit- 
man, on reaching the western settlements on his way 
east, had found preparations making for a large emigra- 
tion, though it was supposed that wagons could not go 
beyond Fort Hall. His presence among the prospective 
pioneers, and his assurances that the route was practicable 
and that he would join them and be their pilot, had in- 
creased their number. His business at Boston and a visit 
to his former home, however, so delayed him that the cara- 
van, which set out on the 20th of May under Peter H. 
Burnet as captain, had nearly reached the Platte River 
before he could overtake it. His previous experience in 
crossing the plains, rivers and mountains enabled him at 
once to render most effective service to the large company. 
One of the members thus speaks of the crossing of the 
Platte soon after his joining the party: ''Those who saw 
him [Dr. Whitman] for three days crossing and recrossing 
the wide stream, swimming his horse to find the best ford, 
and at last heard him order the one hundred or more 



76 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

teams to be chained together and driven in one long line 
to ford for two miles that river swollen by spring floods, 
cheering the drivers, permitting not a moment's halt, lest 
they should sink in the quicksands, will never forget the 
man nor the deed." Another* writes: '*It is no dispar- 
agement to others to say that to no other individual are 
the emigrants of 1843 '^^ much indebted for the successful 
conclusion of their journey as to Dr. Marcus Whitman." 

At Fort Hall, the most eastern depot of the Hudson 
Bay Company, the Company's agent, as usual, did all he 
could to induce the immigrants to abandon their purpose 
of going to Oregon, by portraying the insurmountable dif- 
ficulties of the way. The route to California was practic- 
able, he said, but not that to Oregon. Dr. Whitman 
assured the alarmed party that if they would only trust 
him he would be responsible for their safe arrival in the 
early fall. From this place he was obliged to proceed 
ahead of the train, as his professional services were re- 
quired at his mission. Before leaving, however, he pro- 
vided a faithful Indian guide, a Cayuse chief named Isti- 
kus, who was well acquainted with the remaining part of 
the road. Under his guidance the party, consisting of 
875 persons, some 200 wagons and 1300 head of cattle, 
reached the Dalles on September 20, 1843. 

This immigration had been preceded by a smaller one 
in 1842, numbering in men, women and children 137 
souls, and having in their train a few head of cattle. 
Other settlers arrived by sea during this and the following 
year, and with the assistance obtained from the Methodist 
mission were soon located in comfortable homes. 
* Mr. Applegate. 



The Immigration of 184J. 'j'j 

The influence of Americans on the Pacific coast, which 
had been growing yearl}^, had now reached such a point 
as to excite anew the jealousy of the Hudson Bay Com- 
pany and of all favoring the supremacy of the English 
government. "The whole policy of the Company," says 
Mr. Gray, "was changed when it was known that Dr. 
Whitman had safely arrived in Washington and the boun- 
dary line was not settled." Dr. Whitman's own estimate 
of the importance of the success of the latest overland im- 
migration was probably shared by the English. He con- 
sidered that it practically settled the destiny of Oregon, 
as is shown by a letter he wrote in April, 1847, to the 
American Board. It was certainly the turning-point in 
the history of the Territory, for it gave the control of its 
civil affairs into the hands of Americans. 

Previous settlers from the States were alive to what the 
English government was doing and were apprehensive of 
the result. This may be learned from a petition which 
they sent to Congress at so early a period as 1840, in 
which they state that "a surveying squadron has been on 
the coast for the past two years, employed in making 
accurate surveys of all its rivers, bays and harbors ; and 
recently the British government is said to have made 
a grant to the Hudson Bay Company of all* lands lying 
between the Columbia River and Puget Sound, and the 
Company is actually exercising acts of ownership over 
these lands and opening extensive farms upon the same. 
These circumstances and other acts of the Company to the 
same effect, and their declaration that the English gov- 
ernment own, and will hold as its own soil, that portion 
of Oregon north of the Columbia River, have led your 



yS The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

petitioners to apprehend that this is the settled policy of 
the English government." * 

''If a settler located anywhere against the Company's 
will, he had to pay the forfeit. Dr. McLaughlin received 
orders, as the governor of this western branch of this 
Company, to despatch agents to Fort Hall and order them 
to stop the American immigration, and if possible to pre- 
vent them from crossing the Blue Mountains. If that 
lamented man. Dr. Marcus Whitman, had not been mur- 
dered, as well as his papers burned, we should have had 
the evidence which this Company feared." f 

In order to counteract the influence of the Protestant 
missionaries, and thus indirectly hinder the settlement of 
the country by Americans, the Hudson Bay Company 
favored and assisted the Jesuit priests from the time of 
their arrival in Oregon, which, as before stated, was soon 
after the Methodist mission and that of the American 
Board had been established. 

As has also been stated, any plan for reclaiming the 
Indians from their wandering life and inducing them to 
settle down and cultivate the soil was antagonistic to the 
commercial interests of the Company and to its policy 
of holding on to all the arable land for its numerous de- 
pendents. The Indians were manifesting a tendency to 
better things. Gradually they were forsaking their former 
nomadic inclinations and were adopting a more civilized 
mode of life. This made the entire country safer and 
each year more desirable and attractive for white immi- 
grants. That this condition of affairs was well under way 

* Gray, pp. 194, 195. 

t Hon. S. R. Thurston, in House of Representatives. 



The Immigration of 1^43. 79 

in 1842 may be seen from the report of Rev. H. H. 
Spalding to Dr. White, the Indian agent for Oregon : 

''I am happy to say that this people (Nez Perce) are 
very generally turning their attention to cultivating the 
soil, and raising hogs, cattle and sheep, and find a much 
more abundant and agreeable source of subsistence in the 
hoe than in their bows and their sticks for digging roots. 
Last season about 140 cultivated from one-fourth of an 
acre to four or five acres each. One chief raised 176 
bushels of peas last season, 100 of corn and 400 bushels 
of potatoes; another, 150 of peas, 160 of corn, a large 
quantity of potatoes, vegetables, etc. Some forty other 
individuals raised each from 20 to 100 bushels of grain." * 

This state of things could not long go on without seri- 
ously interfering with the schemes of the agents of the 
Hudson Bay Company. As the missionaries were in- 
structing the natives in the use of the plough and other 
agricultural implements and furnishing them with seed, 
it was evident that ere long most of the arable land, which 
at this period was confined to the borders of the streams, 
would presently be either in possession of the Indians or 
occupied by the incoming immigrants. 

The methods adopted by the Roman Catholic priests 
contemplated no such material results, but only the sim- 
plest instruction in the ritual observances of their church, 
which could be secured without a fixed residence among 
the Indians or any particular change in their previous 
mode of life. These plans naturally fell in with the policy 
pursued by the Company, which was ''to destroy the chief- 
tainship, cut the different tribes into smaller clans, and 

* The entire report may be found in Gray's Oregon, chap. xxxi. 



8o The Story of Marcus WJiitman. 

divide their interests as far as possible, so as to weaken 
them and render them incapable of injuring the whites." * 
Accordingly, soon after the arrival of Dr. Whitman and 
party, the Company sent for the Roman Catholic priests 
Blanchet and Demerse, who established their headquar- 
ters at Vancouver. Blanchet entered the field occupied 
by the Methodist mission, Demerse that worked by the 
American Board. 

It was not long before this disturbing element made 
itself felt. ''The interpreters of the Company, being of 
the Roman Catholic faith, made free to inform the Indians 
that theirs was the true religion. The Indians soon came 
to the station of Dr. Whitman and informed him of what 
had been done, and that they had been told by the priest 
that his was the true religion; that what he and Mr. 
Spalding had been teaching them was all false, and that 
it was not right for the Indians to listen to them," ^ 

The Indians were told also that the American mission- 
aries were actuated only by greed. " While the Protestant 
missions," says Mr. Gray, "were struggling to improve 
the condition of the Indians, to teach them to cultivate 
their lands and become permanent settlers, and to give 
the Indian children a knowledge of books, the Hudson 
Bay Company and Jesuit priests were attempting to per- 
suade them that the instructions given by these American 
or Boston missionaries were only to cover up a secret de- 
sign they had to take their lands and property from them, 
and eventually to occupy the country themselves." J 

An endeavor was made to excite the cupidity of the 

* Hines' Oregon, quoted by Gray, p. 285. 
t Gray, p. 180. 
X Gray, p. 183. 



The Immigration of 184J. 81 

Indians by telling them that the missionaries, on first com- 
ing into their country, had promised not only to pay them 
for all lands required for mission purposes, but to make 
them yearly a present of a large amount of valuable goods. 
The spreaders of this story were careful not to say that such 
promises had been made by any of the present missionaries, 
for that could have been easily disproved ; but the burden 
was laid upon Mr. Parker, who in 1835 visited the Cayuse 
and Nez Perce tribes, to select, at their request, mission 
stations among them ; and the sole authority for it was a 
statement of old John Toupin, an interpreter of the Hud- 
son Bay Company, who claimed that he had been employed 
by Mr. Parker to assist him in his intercourse with the 
Indians. We shall not stop now to refute this false charge, 
as we shall have occasion to refer to the matter further on. 

Another story set afloat was that the Protestant mission- 
aries were poisoning the Indians in order to get possession 
of their lands. Particularly was this charged upon Dr. 
Whitman, who in the kindness of his heart frequently pre- 
scribed and furnished medicines gratuitously at his station. 
The prevalence of the measles in a virulent form, attended 
with an unusual number of deaths, due chiefly to the great 
exposure of the sick, aroused the fears and suspicions of 
some of the Indians, and served the purpose of the Roman 
Catholic half-breeds, who were instigating them to injure 
their greatest benefactors. 

The first serious demonstration made by the Indians 
against the whites, was the murder and plundering of a 
company of fur traders who were regarded by the Hudson 
Bay Company as trespassers upon their hunting rights and 
lands. This occurred in 1842. While the Company com- 



§2 The Story of Marcus WJiiiman. 

pelled the robbers to give up the stolen property, it profited 
by the affair, as it secured on its own terms the large 
amount of valuable furs which were recovered. 

During the same year, the Indians near the missions of 
the American Board were very insolent and annoying. 
They seized one of the missionaries, Rev. Mr. Smith, and 
grossly insulted him, on the alleged ground that he was 
occupying their lands. Tliey broke into Dr. Whitman's 
house, and treated him with indignity and some violence. 
One of them presented a loaded gun at the breast of Rev. 
H. H. Spalding, and menaced and abused him, stopping 
only short of shooting him ; and before leaving, they in- 
sulted both Mrs. Whitman and Mrs. Spalding. A few 
days after this, they burned down the misson mill on the 
premises of Dr. Whitman, and all its appendages and con- 
siderable grain, damaging the mission not less than ^1200 
or $1500. 

This and succeeding years witnessed occasional panics 
in the white settlements, causedby the threatening attitude 
of the Indians, some of whom had declared their intention 
to kill off the *' Boston" people, meaning those from the 
United States. Owing to the disturbed condition of the 
country, and other reasons which do not fall within 
our present purpose, the Methodist mission was abandoned, 
and all its missionaries left the country. 

This mission being disposed of, and no longer interfering 
with the commercial supremacy claimed by the Company 
or the religious sway of the Jesuit fathers, the latter, who 
had in the meantime received large reinforcements from 
Belgium and Canada and made extensive preparations to 
occupy the country, were now free to give their sole atten- 



The Immigration of 184J. 83 

tion to the destruction of the mission stations of the Amer- 
ican Board. The influence and the consonant policy of 
the Company and the priests worked out a terrible result ; 
for at Waiilatpu, on November 29, 1847, a few of the more 
credulous and superstitious of the Indians, directed by Fin- 
lay, a bigoted Roman Catholic half-breed, massacred, under 
very revolting circumstances, Dr. and Mrs. Whitman and 
most of their assistants, male and female. The members 
of the mission who escaped were compelled to leave the 
country. The other persons at the station, mostly immi- 
grants who had recently arrived and had been kindly cared 
for by Dr. Whitman, were taken captive and held by the 
Indians until ransomed by Mr. Ogden, a chief factor of 
the Hudson Bay Company. He also sent word to the Nez 
Perces to deliver up Mr. Spalding and the other whites at 
his station. They immediately did so, bringing them to 
Fort Walla Walla. 

As the details of this terrible tragedy are to be found in 
Gray's Histoty of Oi-egon, and in Senate Executive Docu- 
ment No. 37, Forty-first Congress, Third Session, it needs 
no further notice here. It was the culmination, so to 
speak, of the efforts which had been made for many years 
by interested parties to destroy the influence of the Protes- 
tant missions, and to prevent the country's settlement by 
immigrants from the States. The changed feeling of the 
Hudson Bay Company was manifest, as we have seen, after 
Dr. Whitman's signal and unexpected success in bringing 
through to Oregon the large immigration of 1843. The 
conduct of the Indians toward American settlers and Amer- 
ican missionaries also became unmistakably hostile from 
this time. The labors of the Protestant missionaries were 



84 The Stoij of Marcus Whitman. 

steadily counteracted, and their motives misrepresented, 
from the day the Jesuit fathers began working among the 
Roman Catholic employes of the Company. 

The Indian atrocities upon the peaceful inhabitants of 
Waiilatpu struck terror into the hearts of all the settle- 
ments exposed to attack by the savages. Measures were 
taken at once for the protection of the defenseless settlers 
and for the punishment of the murderers, by the Legislative 
Assembly of Oregon. Necessary funds were provided, and 
an armed force was on the march for the scene of action, 
within twenty-four hours after the issue of the executive 
authority for arming the volunteers. The latter were ac- 
companied by the governor and three peace commissioners. 
After several slight skirmishes with hostile Indians, the 
military arrived at Waiilatpu, where the commissioners 
called for the principal chiefs of all friendly tribes to meet 
them in council, and arrangements for peace were con- 
cluded. 

No sooner had the brief war of powder and ball ceased, 
than a much fiercer war of words ensued. The friends of 
the missionaries, and the American settlers generally, 
charged the Hudson Bay Company and the Jesuit priests 
with being either morally responsible for the massacre, or 
criminally culpable in not preventing it, as they were aware 
of the unfriendly feelings of the Indians toward Dr. Whit- 
man and of the threats which had been made to destroy the 
mission and drive away the missionaries. These charges 
obtained general credence in the community at the time ; 
not only because of the known relations and spirit of those 
thus held accountable, but also because *'in the midst of 
all this fury and savage shedding of blood, not one Roman 



The Immigration of 184J. 85 

Catholic priest, not a child or servant even of the Hudson 
Bay Company, nor a single person who had professed 
friendship for the Roman Catholic faith, was harmed in 
the least, while all Protestant missionaries and American 
citizens were either killed, or driven from that part of the 
country."* 
* Gray, pp. 470, 532. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

A LONG AND BITTER CONTROVERSY. 

A PROTRACTED paper controversy between British 
subjects and Americans, and the friends respectively 
of the Jesuit priests and the Protestant missionaries, fol- 
lowed the Whitman massacre. In the course of it, certain 
ugly facts were adduced as to the origin of the hostility of 
the Indians toward the American missionaries. The singu- 
lar exemption of all Roman Catholics and the Hudson Bay 
Company's employes from either fear or harm of any kind, 
and conduct on the part of certain priests, and agents of 
the Company, subsequent to the massacre, would suggest, 
unless satisfactorily explained, that they were not only in- 
directly, but morally responsible for the tragedy. 

Against no single individual, not connected directly 
with the murders, did the feeling run so high, and were 
charges so frequently made as against Rev. J. B. A. Brouil- 
let, Vicar-General of Walla Walla. Deeming it necessary 
to defend his conduct, he wrote for the New York Free- 
man's journal a series of articles which were afterwards 
collected and published in a pamphlet entitled Protesta7it- 
ism in Oregon. Most of this pamphlet was embodied in a 
report made to the House of Representatives in 1857, by 
J. Ross Browne, an agent of the Treasury Department, 
who had been sent to the Pacific coast to obtain informa- 

86 



A Long a?id Bitter Controversy. 87 

tion respecting '^the aborigines of Oregon, and the causes 
of war between them and the whites." 

Among other things included in this report, were 
Brouillet's charges that the Protestant missionaries were 
unwise and so far unworthy men, who had brought the ven- 
geance of the Indians upon their own heads by their im- 
prudent and bad conduct, and whose labors had resulted in 
no benefit to the natives of the country. 

These accusations having taken such permanent and 
public form, measures were adopted to refute them, and to 
vindicate the character and work of the missionaries. The 
testimony was placed in the custody of the Indian De- 
partment at Washington, and by resolution of the Senate 
was printed in 1871, as Executive Document 37 of the 
Forty-first Congress. 

Soon after the publication of this document, its state- 
ments and evidence were repeatedly assailed by Roman 
Catholic writers, and the friends of the Protestant mis- 
sions assert that very few copies of it ever went into circu- 
lation through the usual channels of distribution. They 
mysteriously disappeared from the public eye, and so com- 
pletely, that it has been impossible for years to obtain a 
single copy. 

The most elaborate and carefully prepared article that 
has fallen under the writer's notice was published in the 
Catholic ^^r/^ in February, 1872. Another was published 
in the Catholic Sentinel \\\ August, 1872. In both articles 
the best efforts of the writers are directed to a vindication 
of the priests and members of the Roman Catholic Church 
from all complicity in the Whitman massacre and the 
destruction of the Protestant missions ; and their main 



88 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

strength is put forth to blacken the moral reputations of 
the missionaries and depreciate their labors in civilizing 
and Christianizing the Indians. It is this shameful en- 
deavor to traduce the character and conduct of good men, 
rather than a wish to fasten any taint of crime upon the 
Jesuits, that moves us to review the charges made by- 
Roman Catholic writers, simply making known the facts 
and leaving the reader to judge for himself how much 
responsibility to visit on the priests, and how much on the 
Hudson Bay Company. 

The Catholic World article opens with a complaint of 
habitual misrepresentations of the Roman Catholic Church 
by the Protestant religious press of the country, charging 
its editors with *' blind prejudices and reckless disregard of 
truth," so that *'no man or woman is safe from the malice 
or scurrility of their pens." We can safely afford to pass 
such accusations unnoticed, since the editors assailed re- 
quire no vindication. Nor will the writer of the article 
complain of our silence, for he says further on, ** We 
scarcely consider them worthy of serious attention," and 
proceeds : 

"But we have had recently placed before us an official 
document, printed at the public expense for the edification 
of the United States Senate — and no doubt widely circu- 
lated throughout the Union under the convenient frank of 
many pious members of Congress — in which are reproduced 
calumnies so gross, and falsehoods so glaring, that we con- 
sider it our duty not only to call public attention to it, but 
to demand from our rulers in Washington by what right 
and authority they print and circulate under official form a 
tissue of fabrications, misrepresentations, and even forger- 



A Long and B liter Controversy. 89 

ies, against the religion, and the ministers of that religion, 
which is professed by 5,000,000 or 6,000,000 of free 
American citizens." 

We have always understood, as before stated, that this 
document was not *' widely circulated." If it had been, 
surely it would have been found in our public and private 
libraries, and no such difficulty experienced, as always has 
been, to get hold of even a single copy. The fact is, com- 
paratively few persons know even of its existence, much 
less of its contents. Its sudden and strange disappearance 
from the public archives alone accounts for this. It would 
not surprise us if Protestants were charged by their enemies 
with its destruction. 

The fact is, the Senate Document was rendered necessary 
by the publication of another official document (No. 38) 
of the House of Representatives containing false and 
calumnious statements. The Senate document was neces- 
sary to the vindication of the truth of history. If the 
Romanists could have their side of the matter published at 
the public expense, why should not Protestants ? More- 
over, the Romanists have diligently written up and widely 
published their side of the story in their own newspapers 
and monthlies, in pamphlets and books ; and they have 
seen to it that copies of these publications were deposited 
in our principal public libraries, in order that they might 
be accessible to future historians and employed to create a 
favorable public sentiment. Why should they complain of 
an effort to present the Protestant side of the case as it is 
understood and believed ? 

The next point raised against the Senate document is that 
it "is composed exclusively of information supplied by 



90 The Story of Marcus Whit7nan. 

Rev. H. H. Spalding to A. B. Meacham, Superintendent 
of Indian Affairs.* .... They consist mainly of extracts 
from the religious press, so called ; inflammatory letters 
from jealous and disappointed preachers, including the 
Rev. H. H. Spalding himself; depositions written out by 
that indefatigable hater with his own hand, and changed 
in many essential points after having been sworn to and 
removed from the control of the deponents ; false quota- 
tions from The Account of the Murder of Dr. Whitman^ 
by the Very Rev. J. B. A. Brouillet, V. G., and others' 
statements of the massacre," etc. 

What is said here about Mr. Spalding may possibly be 
true to the extent that he collected and forwarded some of 
the matter contained in the document. But in no proper 
sense can he be called its author ; nor do the contents of 
the document rest on his authority only, or chiefly. The 
document contains the sworn evidence of a score or more 
of official and private persons ; extracts from the most 
reliable historians of that part of our country, who were 
personally acquainted with the circumstances j and the tes- 
timony of ecclesiastical bodies on the ground, having the 
best of opportunities to learn the facts from reputable wit- 
nesses still living at the time when they published their 
solemn verdicts. This, strange to say, is the very kind of 
proof our critic claims to produce in his article, so far as 
he can command it, to destroy the reputation of the Prot- 
estant missionaries, and to shield the Jesuit priests. 

But, even supposing that the contents of the Senate 
document had been collected and published by Mr. Spald- 

* The depositions of witnesses, and statements of United States and Stat^ 
officials. 



A Long a?id Bitter Controversy. 91 

ing, why should not this great array of evidence be enti- 
tled to an authority equal at least to that of Document 38 
of the House of Representatives, which it so conclusively 
refutes? The latter contains sixty-six pages, fifty-three of 
which are taken verbatim from the account of the Whitman 
massacre given by Vicar-General Brouillet, one of the chief 
parties charged with complicity in the crime. 

If the objection raised by the writer of the Catholic 
World article is valid, it must apply with much greater 
force to the House document than to that of the Senate. 
The former is almost wholly the work of one man, and he 
an accused man, to say nothing of its cha4:acter, and the 
large use made of it by Mr. Browne in his report, which 
has led to the public charge that he '' ignored the people, 
the country, and the government whose agent he claimed 
to be, and was reporting for the special benefit of the 
Roman religion and the British government, as these are 
extensively quoted as historical data from which his report 
and conclusions are drawn." * 

The writer of the article under review also attempts to 
cast discredit upon much of the evidence presented in the 
Senate document, in order to weaken its influence on the 
public. But this is a vain endeavor. The testimony there 
given, including that of a former governor of the Terri- 
tory and other United States officials, cannot be shaken, 
much less invalidated, by the insinuations of an anony- 
mous magazine writer. 

A special point is also made against the testimony borne 
by the eight ecclesiastical bodies, ''claiming to represent 
30,000 brother members," on the ground that they knew 

* Gray's Oregon, p. 34. 



92 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

nothing personally about that concerning which they testi- 
fied, and ''must of necessity have depended solely on 
the statements of the veracious Rev. H. H. Spalding." 

The reader will notice that their dependence is said to be 
'^solely" on Rev. Mr. Spalding; as if there were no 
other persons with any knowledge of the facts; or as if 
these intelligent bodies of men, on the ground, could not 
and would not have availed themselves of all opportunities 
to learn the truth from the many accessible and reliable 
sources of information then existing. They were not a 
class of persons likely to take things at second hand, and 
promulgate what had been put into their mouths to utter. 
To say the least, they were much more likely to know the 
truth of what they affirmed than a writer living 3000 miles 
away. But we are not surprised at the effort to cast dis- 
credit upon the testimony of these large and respectable 
Christian denominations, for it is very explicit and pro- 
nounced in its condemnation of the Jesuit fathers. 

The article in the Catholic Wor/dsta.tes the issue between 
the Romish priests and the Protestant missionaries of Ore- 
gon in the following language : 

"On the week commencing on the 29th of November, 
1847, niore than twenty-four years ago, a certain mission- 
ary to the Cayuse Indians, named Dr. Whitman, who had 
resided among them for several years, was, with his wife 
and twelve other Americans, brutally murdered by the sav- 
ages ; and it is now attempted by Spalding, who was his 
friend, and missionary to the Nez Perces, a neighboring 
tribe, to fix the guilt of this foul outrage on the missionary 
priests who in that year accompanied the Rt. Rev. A. M. 
A. Blanchet, Bishop of Nesqualy, to Oregon, and who, it 



A Long and Bitter Co7itroversy. 93 

is alleged, instigated the Indians to commit the deed in 
order to get rid of the Protestant missionaries. At the 
time of the slaughter, there was with others under Dr. 
Whitman's roof a young woman named Bewley, whom one 
of the chiefs desired to have for his wife ; and it is also 
asserted that not only did the priests encourage her to yield 
to the Indian's wishes, but forced her from the shelter of 
their home and refused her any protection whatever." 

It will be observed that the writer alleges that the pur- 
pose of the Senate document is to fix the guilt on the 
Romish priests of inciting '' the Indians to commit the 
deed in order to get rid of the Protestant missions," and 
of a want of humanity toward the captives, especially the 
young woman. He affirms, further on in the article, that 
''no one for months thought of attributing it to the inter- 
ference of the Catholic missionaries" until "the crazy 
preacher [Spalding] hinted and next broadly asserted that 
the Jesuits were at the bottom of the whole matter." The 
writer also assumes that this ''slander" was effectually 
put to rest by "a full and authentic account of the whole 
transaction," which was published by Rev. Mr. Brouillet, 
the very priest most implicated, and republished in J. 
Ross Browne's report. 

To weaken, and to destroy as far as possible, the evi- 
dence presented in the Senate document, the writer labors 
to prove that the Protestant missions in Oregon were an 
ignominious failure, chiefly because of the bad moral char- 
acter and incompetency of the missionaries. To sustain 
this accusation the testimony of Captain Bonneville is ad- 
duced, who visited that region in 1832, and who describes 
the Indians as " immaculate in honesty and purity of pur- 



94 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

pose, and more like a nation of saints than a horde of 
savages. ' ' 

Such antecedent high morality and piety is, as might be 
expected, accounted for by the fact that the Indians had 
*' imbibed some notions of the Christian faith from Cath- 
olic missionaries and traders who have been among them." 
When and by what Roman Catholic missionaries had ^hese 
Indians been instructed prior to the year 1832 ? There is 
not a particle of proof to sustain this statement ; besides, 
the article goes on to state that the Roman Catholic mis- 
sionaries began their labors in Oregon in 1838, six years 
afterwards. The only other way, then, by this writer's 
admission, that the Indians could have been taught their 
wonderful piety was by the French fur-traders and the 
Rocky Mountain men, who were notoriously wicked and 
lecherous and who oppressed and wronged them in every 
possible manner, using them for the indulgence of their 
depraved passions. 

The Indians of lower Oregon, who had been longest in 
contact with the whites and had most to do with these 
pious missionary fur-traders of the Hudson Bay Company, 
are spoken of by all the writers of that day as having been 
sadly corrupted by the vices of the whites, and their num- 
bers greatly reduced by the vile and destructive diseases 
which the new-comers had brought among them. 

But the Nez Perces are eulogized in this article for a pur- 
pose, namely, to make it appear that the Indians were 
made worse rather than improved through the labors of 
the Protestant missionaries. 

The truth respecting the Nez Perces is much more nearly 
told by Admiral Wilkes in his Western America. He rep- 



A Long and Bitier Controversy. 95 

resents them as '^ superior to other tribes in intellect and 
in moral qualities," but adds: ''There are certain traits 
in their character that have hitherto neutralized, in a 
great measure, the zealous and well-directed efforts which 
have been made for their improvement. The first of these 
is a feeling of personal independence amounting to law- 
lessness, which springs naturally from their habits of life 
and which renders it almost impossible to reconcile them 
to any regular discipline or system of labor An- 
other trait of a similar kind is a certain fickleness of tem- 
per, which makes them liable to change their opinions and 
policy with every passing impulse." 

I^et the reader of this paragraph notice, first, its indirect 
but valuable endorsement of the policy of the Protestant 
missions; second, the difficulties the missionaries had to 
encounter in their efforts to persuade the Indians to settle 
down and engage in agricultural pursuits ; and, third, the 
susceptibility of the Indians to outside influences. 

After these Indians had had the advantages for some 
years of the moral and pious instructions of the fur- 
traders, the Protestant missionaries took up their abode 
among them; and instead of improving in morals and 
religion they sadly deteriorated in both, according to the 
writer in the Catholic World. Notwithstanding the labors 
and teachings of the Protestant missionaries, the natives 
grew worse and worse in their disposition and conduct, so 
that the Methodist missions had finally to be abandoned, 
and those of the American Board were put in the way of 
extinction by the massacre of Dr. Whitman by his own 
Indians. 

It would take us too far away from our present purpose 



g6 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

should we pause to defend at any great length the Meth- 
odist missions, which this writer assails with the same viru- 
lence as he does those of the American Board. We are 
inclined to believe, from what has been published from 
friend and foe, that their founders were good men, actu- 
ated by high and noble aims. That they did accomplish 
much good, we have the evidence of the witnesses quoted 
in the Senate document, and of Gray, who, in his History 
of Oregon, adds that they lacked experience and perhaps 
some other requisites of success. Their plans or methods 
were not the best, as Dr. Olin,* one of the authorities 
cited in the article in the Catholic World, admits. 

We must remember that, being the pioneers in this mis- 
sionary work, they had many and great obstacles to sur- 
mount. They had at first to give a large part of their 
time to raising food to supply their own necessities and 
provide for those dependent upon them; this led them too 
largely into secular affairs, which should have been kept 
more subordinate to the purely spiritual. They also nec- 
essarily encountered the opposition of the Hudson Bay 
Company in their efforts to improve the material condi- 
tion of the people among whom they labored, and the 
power of the Company was at the time well-nigh irre- 
sistible. To these outward influences should be added 
the fact that the vicious whites had introduced ''loath- 
some diseases" among the Indians, by reason of which 
some of the tribes in lower Oregon were fast disappearing. 
Rev. Mr. Parker, who visited that region in 1835, esti- 
mated the number of Indians at 8000 ; but Rev. Mr.^Lee, 

* Said by the writer " to be one of them." This is an error, and shows 
a very slight knowledge of the subject treated. 



A Long and Bitter Controversy. 97 

one of the chief missionaries in 1840, could find only 
6000. 

The testimony of Dr. White, sub Indian agent, is also 
quoted in the article to show the want of success of the 
Methodist missions : 

''The Rev. Mr. Lee and associates are doing but little 

for the Indians With all that has been expended, 

without doubting the correctness of the intention, it is 
most manifest to every observer that the Indians of this 
lower country, as a whole, have been very little benefited." 

It is rarely that one can find more misleading and unfair 
quotations than these. The writer quotes only so much as 
suits his object, and omits all that would show what good 
the missionaries were doing and why they had not accom- 
plished more. 

The reports from which the extracts are taken may be 
seen on pages 231 and 2^6 oi Gvdiy's History of Oregon. 
The first extract entire is as follows: 

''The Rev. Mr. Lee and associates, from their well-con- 
ducted operations at the Dalles, upon the Columbia, and 
a school of some thirty scholars successfully carried for- 
ward upon the Willamet, are doing but little for the In- 
dians ; nor could great efforts produce much good among 
the scattered remnants of the broken tribes of this lower 
district, who are fast disappearing before the ravages of 
the most loathsome diseases." 

The school referred to was known as the Oregon Mis- 
sion Manual Labor School. Whether it was accomplish- 
ing the purpose of its founders may be seen from the 
statement of Captain W. A. Slocum, of the United States 
Navy, who visited it in January, 1837 : "I have seen chil- 



98 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

dren who, two years ago, were roaming over their own 
native wilds in a state of savage barbarism, now, being 
brought within the knowledge of moral and religious in- 
struction, becoming useful members of society, by being 
taught tlie most useful of all arts, agriculture, and all this 
without the slightest compulsion." So well pleased was 
he with the methods here pursued to civilize and perma- 
nently benefit the savages that, before leaving, he made a 
personal contribution of fifty dollars to the funds of the 
school. 

Out of this humble undertaking came in 1842 the col- 
legiate institution known as the Oregon Institute, all of 
whose first trustees were either Methodist missionaries or 
were connected with the missions of that church. The 
funds for the erection of the necessary buildings for the 
institution were derived almost wholly from the same 
source, many persons belonging to the Methodist mission 
giving *' from one-fourth to one-third of all they pos- 
sessed." By an act of the Oregon Legislature, the Insti- 
tute became Willamette University, which has had in some 
years as many as 300 students in attendance in its various 
departments. Does this look as if these men labored in 
vain or as if their work were rather an injury than a 
blessing? What candid person can look back to the 
foundations which they laid and deny that the influ- 
ence of this Indian mission was of inestimable value to 
Oregon ? 

The second extract in the article likewise omits all that 
would show the reasons for no greater success. The very 
next line to that quoted reads : 

** They were too far gone with scrofula and venereal. But 



A Long and Bitter Controversy. 99 

should he (Mr. Lee) insist, as a reason for his claim,* the 
benefit arising to the colony and the country, I am with 
him heartily ; and notwithstanding the claim is a valuable 
one, this country has been increased more by the mission 

operations than twice its amount in finance It is 

but just to say, he and his associates are exerting a consid- 
erable and most salutary influence all abroad among us. ' ' 

It is thus seen that if the reports had beeji honestly used 
by the writer in the Catholic World, they would not have 
subserved his purpose, for they show that good results did 
attend the labors of the Methodists, and that prominent 
among the obstacles which limited their influence were the 
vices and diseases introduced among the Indians by the 
pious Roman Catholic French and Canadian fur traders ! 

Mr. Gray, in speaking of Dr. White's reports, says : 
*'The truth is, and was at the time Dr. White wrote, 1843, 
that Mr. Lee and his mission were the only persons in the 
Willamet valley doing anything to improve the condition 
of the Indians, of which their Indian school, now AVilla- 
metf University, is a permanent monument." Moreover, 
it must be borne in mind that Dr. White was regarded by 
many Oregonians as having been used constantly by the 
Hudson Bay Company to promote and protect its interests; 
his influence being employed to divide and destroy the 
American settlement, *'as he had done that of the Metho- 
dist mission." 

Justice requires that in any proper estimate of what was 
accomplished by the Methodist mission, prominence be 
given to its influence in the settlement of the country; for 

* A claim preferred by the mission to certain lands, 
t WiUamette. 



lOo The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

when the time came to organize a provisional government 
for the protection of the inhabitants, the Methodist mis- 
sion, says a trustworthy writer, ''worked nobly for this 
object. That mission was the centre around which all 
these efforts at first crystallized, and without which little, if 
anything, would probably have been accomplished at that 
early day." 

The labors of the missionaries were twofold. Their 
first and chief aim was to civilize and Christianize the 
Indians ; but when they saw the aborigines melting away 
by reason of diseases introduced among them by the pious 
fur traders, they naturally turned their attention to benefit- 
ing the white immigrants, to whom, as we have seen, their 
efforts proved a great and lasting blessing. 

The author of The River of the West, Mrs. Victor, ' 
is quoted by the writer in the Catholic World as saying: 
"So far from benefiting the Indians, the Methodist mission 
became an actual injury to them." Here again occurs a 
most noticeable omission. The entire passage is: 

" The sudden and absolute change of habits which the 
Indian students were compelled to make did not agree 
with them. The first breaking up of the ground for mak- 
ing farms caused malaria, and induced much sickness 
among them. Many had died, and many others had gone 
back to their former habits. Much vice and disease had 
prevailed among the natives, which had been introduced 
by deserting sailors and other profligate adventurers."* 

* River of the West, p. 288. But Mrs. Victor is an indifferent authority at 
best, for elsewhere in her book she shows that she has no proper concep- 
tion of religion, or the work of missions. She says Indians cannot be 
taught except through material things ; thcit the missionaries began 
wrong, by first teaching religion, and hence their failure. She says, too, 



A Long and Bitter Controversy. loi 

In this way, and with such misuse of the authorities 
quoted, the writer in the Catholic World endeavors to 
prove the Methodist missions a failure ; and with evident 
self-complacency he says : ' ' There ended the first chapter 
in the history of the progress and civilization of the 
Indians in Oregon." 

On the other hand, what is the judgment of Mr. Gray, 
who knew all the parties, was conversant with their work, 
and was a resident of Oregon during almost the entire 
period? On page 598 of his history we read : 

^'The Methodist missionary influence upon the natives 
was good, so far as they had an opportunity to exert any. 
At the Dalles it was certainly good and lasting, notwith- 
standing the Jesuits placed a station alongside of them. 
The Methodists were, from the commencement of their 
mission, interfered with in every way possible in their 
efforts to improve the condition of the Indians, and induce 
them to cultivate their lands, and leave off the hunting of 
fur animals." 



that Dr. Whitman and Rev. Dr. Parker parted, because they differed and 
could not get along together. This is an erroneous statement. The true 
reason we have given. 



CHAPTER IX. 

MISSIONS OF THE AMERICAN BOARD. 

HAVING disposed of the Methodist missions, the 
writer in the Catholic World addresses himself to 
what he calls the '^ Presbyterian mission :" 

''The Methodists having selected lower Oregon as the 
field of their labors, the Presbyterians chose the upper or 
eastern portion of the territory. They arrived in 1836, three 
in number, afterwards increased to twelve, and backed up 
by the Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Dr. 
Marcus Whitman settled at Waiilatpu among the Cayuses 
and Walla Wallas, and Messrs. H. H. Spalding and W. H. 
Gray at Lapwai, with the Nez Perces. In 1838, the Spo- 
kane mission was established by Messrs. Walker and Ellis.* 
Their prospects of success were at first most brilliant. The 
savages received them kindly, and listened to them atten- 
tively." 

And Mrs. Victor testifies that ''there was no want of 
ardor in the Presbyterian missionaries. They applied 
themselves in earnest to the work they had undertaken. 
They were diligent in their efforts to civilize and Christian- 
ize their Indians." 

Similar testimony is to be seen in Townsend's narrative, 
Across the Rocky Mountains, with respect to the fidel- 
ity of Dr. Whitman and Rev. Mr. Spalding. 
*Eells. 

102 



Missions of the American Board. 103 

"They appear admirably qualified for the arduous duty 
to which they have devoted themselves, their minds being 
fully alive to the mortifications and trials incident to a 
residence among wild Indians ; but they do not shrink 
from the task, believing it to be their religious duty to 
engage in this work." 

But however capable and devoted these men were, ac- 
cording to the writer in the Catholic World, they " made a 
fatal mistake at the very beginning, which not only reflects 
on their personal honesty, but shows that they knew noth- 
ing of the character of the people they came to instruct." 

What was this mistake that compromised ** their personal 
honesty" ? Why, that they had promised to pay the In- 
dians for all the lands required for mission purposes, and 
that " a big ship loaded with goods would come yearly to 
be divided among them." 

Who is charged with having made such foolish prom- 
ises? The missionaries? No ; this is not once pretended ; 
the assertion is made against the Rev. Mr. Parker, who, as 
the reader will recall, visited these tribes in 1835 to select 
suitable places for mission stations. Had this charge been 
placed to the account of the missionaries, it could easily 
have been refuted by scores of reputable witnesses. 

On whose authority is the accusation made ? Not even 
on Vicar-General Brouillet's, which, from his relations to 
the question at issue, would be sufficiently untrustworthy. 
It rests entirely on statements of '' old " John Toupin, the 
Roman Catholic interpreter to Pombrun, agent of the 
Hudson Bay Company, made in 1848, more than twelve 
years afterwards. Toupin 's evidence is deemed so essential 
that it is invariably quoted, and employed in all of the 



I04 The Story of Marcus Whittttan. 

Roman Catholic accounts of the Whitman massacre. If 
other witnesses would have borne like testimony, who 
doubts that they would have been cited ? 

The strong antecedent improbability that any such prom- 
ises were made, all must admit. If the Indians were so 
anxious for religious teachers as to send a deputation all the 
way to St. Louis to ask for them, who can believe that they 
would refuse to give the missionaries all the land they 
needed to raise crops for subsistence? *' At that time," 
says Mr. Gray,* ^* there was not a band or tribe of Indians 
west of the Rocky Mountains but was ready to give land 
to any white man who would come and live in the country. 
This land question, as stated by Brouillet and Ross Browne, 
had no part in the matter." 

We have carefully examined Rev. Mr. Parker's book, in 
which he gives an account of his visit, but we can find not 
a word about the alleged promises. On the contrary, he 
appears to have been particularly cautious and guarded in 
his intercourse with the Indians. On page 78, he gives an 
account of his and Dr. Whitman's interview with the Flat- 
heads and Nez Perces, and says : *' We laid before them the 
object of our appointment, and explained to them the 
benevolent desires of Christians concerning them." He 
then speaks of their desire to have missionaries come and 
reside among them, and of the great promise of useful- 
ness, as the harvest was white, etc. So far from mention- 
ing any promise to buy land or furnish presents, he says, 
on page 79 : ** We did not call together the chiefs of the 
Shoshones and Utaws to propose the subject of missions 
among them, lest we should excite expectations which 

* Oregon, p. 461. 



Missions of the American Board. 105 

would not soon be fulfilled. We were more cautious upon 
this subject, because it is difficult to make an Indian under- 
stand the difference between a proposal and a promise." 

Again, speaking of the repeated entreaties of Indians 
from the Dalles, who ''begged for some one to come and 
teach them," he says: "I could not promise, but replied 
that I hoped it would not be more than two snows before 
some one would be sent .... that when I returned [to 
the East] I would use my influence to have others come 
and live among them." * 

With reference to Brouillet's statement, solely on the 
authority of ''old" John Toupin, that Rev. Mr. Parker 
made promises to the Indians, Mr. Gray speaks most posi- 
tively : "Brouillet cites Rev. Mr. Parker's first supposed 
or imaginary statement to the Indians, as a cause of the 
massacre, which we know to be false and unfounded from 
the six years' early acquaintance we had with those In- 
dians, and also from the personal allusions he makes to 
transactions with which we were intimately acquainted, 
and know to be false in fact and inference. t .... Which 
promise Mr. Parker never made, and these Roman priests 
made up to cause difficulty with the Indians and the Amer- 
ican missions and settlements." J 

On page 46 of Senate Executive Document 37, in an- 
swer to the question whether "the taking of the Indians' 
land by the missionaries was one of the causes of the mur- 
der of Dr. Whitman and family," ex-Governor Abernathy 
answers: "I believe and know this to be false;" and 
Hon. A. Hinman answers: "The most wicked falsehood 
ever uttered." Rev. J. L. Griffin, who was laboring as 

* Parker, p. 257. f Gray, p. 502. { Gray, p. 511. 



io6 The Story of Marcus Whitman, 

an independent missionary at that time in Oregon, testi- 
fies as follows : '' Whitman and Spalding took no lands — 
only the stations they occupied and improved, as the In- 
dians requested them, and upon which they located them 
on arriving in the country, in answer to a call from the 
Indians and as authorized by a written permit by the War 
Department, at Washington, dated March i, 1836." 

The testimony of Chief Joseph, of the Nez Perce tribe, 
may be seen in an article in the North Amebic an Review 
of March, 1878. He says: *'When my father was a 
young man there came to the country a white man [Rev. 
Mr. Spalding] who talked spirit law. He won the affec- 
tions of our people because he spoke good things to them. 
At first he did not say anything about white men wanting 
to settle on our lands. Nothing was said about that until 
about twenty years ago." 

It is unquestionably true that the missionaries, including 
Dr. Whitman, had trouble with the Indians at various 
times with respect to lands. The history of the mission 
itself, as also the statements of Messrs. Whitman and 
Spalding, bear evidence to this fact. In the Annual Re- 
port of the American Board for 1842, page 194, we have 
this statement, presumably based on information furnished 
by the missionaries : 

'•'A papal Indian belonging to one of the tribes east of 
the Rocky Mountains had so instigated some of the Cay- 
uses that they treated Dr. Whitman and Mr. Gray with a 
good deal of insolence and abuse, destroying some prop- 
erty and demanding payment for the land, timber, fuel 
and water the missionaries had used, and threatening to 
drive them from the country. ' ' 



Missions of the America^i Board. 107 

Other instances of offered violence are on record, as 
also the destruction by fire of a grist mill at the Waiilatpu 
station. 

It will be observed that the demand for payment for 
the land was the result of the instigation of a papal In- 
dian, and not based on any previous promise made by 
the missionaries. Moreover, a renegade Delaware Indian 
named Tom Hill had told them that ''there was nothing 
in religion except to make money ; for they (the mission- 
aries) only wanted to make money, and at last more 
Americans would come and take away their land." 

But the influence of these evil-minded persons extended 
to comparatively few of the Indians, most of the Cayuses 
being sensible of the great benefits they had received from 
the residence of the missionaries among them. At one 
time, when some of them expressed dissatisfaction with 
Dr. Whitman, he called them together and declared his 
willingness to leave the country if they desired. All but 
a very few of the tribe were anxious to have him remain. 
And Mr. Geiger, who was left in charge of Dr. Whitman's 
station when the latter made his memorable journey to the 
East in 1842, was evidently in the confidence of the In- 
dians, for they consulted him at all times and relied on 
what he told them. This does not look as if their hos- 
tility to tlie mission was very great, or as if they thought 
the missionaries were robbing them of their lands and 
giving them nothing in return. Mr. Spalding held the 
same position respecting the land question as did Dr. 
Whitman; for, according to Toupin as quoted by Brou- 
illet, Mr. Parker had made the same promises to the Nez 
Perces as Dr. Whitman had to the Cayuses. 



io8 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

That the fears of the Indians had been aroused by evil- 
disposed persons and by the large numbers of immigrants 
who were coming into their country, admits of no doubt ; 
and that Dr. Whitman, because of his relation to the large 
immigration of 1843, should have become more especially 
obnoxious to some of the Indians, may be freely admitted. 
In this sense, and to this extent, the land question may 
have had something to do with breaking up the mis- 
sion j for it is a question that has always arisen and given 
trouble wherever the whites have come into contact with 
the aborigines. 

The next effort of the writer in the Catholic World is 
to depreciate the work of the missionaries. He quotes 
again, for this purpose, from Mrs. Victor's book: ''At 
each of these three stations, in 1842, there was a small 
body of land under cultivation, a few cattle and hogs, a 
flouring and saw-mill and a blacksmith's shop." 

This, again, has reference solely to the material prog- 
ress of the Indians, which was truly remarkable when we 
consider the obstacles presented by the habits of the na- 
tives, the self-interest of the white traders, and the very 
limited resources of the missionaries. On this latter point 
Rev. Mr. Griffin testifies, on page 49 of the Senate docu- 
ment, that "■ Spalding and Whitman had not a dollar sal- 
ary, and were allowed by the Board to ' draw but ^500 a 
year' for each family, with which to do everything in 
that * great and terrible wilderness,' destitute of every- 
thing, 200 miles from the nearest mill and 400 from shop 
or store, and with that to feed, clothe, house themselves 
and to do all missionary work." 

Four lines are next selected and quoted from a report 



Missions of the American Board. 109 

of six pages made by Rev. Mr. Spalding to Dr. White, 
the sub Indian agent, going into the details of his work : 
**But two natives have as yet been admitted into the 
church. Some ten or twelve others give pleasing evi- 
dence of having been born again." This is produced 
to give the impression that these were all the results 
accomplished by Mr. Spalding and the other mission- 
aries. The very next paragraph would have destroyed 
the impression sought to be made. It is as follows : 

"Concerning the schools, and congregations on the 
Sabbath, I will speak only of this station. The congre- 
gation varies at different seasons of the year For 

a few weeks in the fall, after the people return from their 
buffalo hunt, and then again in the spring, the congrega- 
tion numbers from 1000 to 2000.* Through the winter 
it numbers from 200 to 800. From July to the ist of 

October, it varies from 200 to 500 The school 

now numbers 225 in daily attendance, half of whom are 
adults. Nearly all the principal men and chiefs in this 
vicinity, with one chief from a neighboring tribe, are 
members of the school. They are as industrious in school 
as they are on their farms. Their improvement is aston- 
ishing About 100 are printing their own books 

with a pen. A good number are now so far advanced 
in reading and printing as to render much assistance in 
teaching. Their books are taken home at nights and 
every lodge becomes a schoolroom. Their lessons are 
Scripture lessons; no others (except the laws) seem to 
interest them Without doubt, a school of nearly 

* The best accounts represent the tribe as then numbering from 2000 to 
4000. 



110 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

the same number could be collected at Kimiah, the sta- 
tion above this." 

This report goes on to speak of Mrs. Spalding as teach- 
ing the female scholars knitting, carding, spinning and 
weaving, while Mr. Spalding taught agriculture, and with 
what success let the same authority inform us : 

*'It was no small tax on my time to give lessons in 
agriculture. That the men of the nation (the first chiefs 
not excepted) rose up to labor when a few hoes and seeds 
were offered them, I can attribute to nothing but the un- 
seen hand of the God of missions. That their habits are 
really changed is acknowledged by themselves. The men 
say, whereas they once did not labor -with their hands, 
now they do ; and often tell me in jesting that I have 
converted them into a nation of women. They are a very 
industrious people, and, from very small beginnings, they 
now cultivate their lands with much skill and to good ad- 
vantage." 

This was but six years from the time the missionaries 
first reached Oregon. In the meantime they had to build 
their own houses, to provide the conveniences of living, 
and to cultivate the soil for the subsistence of their fami- 
lies and dependents. 

Mr. Spalding tells us, in the report from which we have 
already quoted, that he "had all this accumulation of 
duties, besides eating my own bread by the sweat of my 
brow. ' ' 

Now, as a foil to this brief and unfair quotation of four 
lines from a six-page statement of details, we commend 
the reader to Mr. Medill's report, dated November 24, 
1845, to Hon. William L. Marcy, Secretary of War. Mr. 



Missions of the American Board. 1 1 1 

Medill was then Agent of Indian Affairs, and he bears 
witness as to what was accomplished in the period of 
nine years: ''The advancement in civilization by the 
numerous tribes in that remote and hitherto neglected 
portion of our territory, with so few advantages, is a mat- 
ter of surprise Numerous schools have grown up 

in their midst, at which their children are acquiring the 
most important and useful information. They have al- 
ready advanced (especially the Nez Perce nation) to a 
degree of civilization that promises the most beneficial 
results to them and their brethren on this side of the 
mountains, with whom they may, and no doubt will, at 
no distant day be brought into intercourse. They are 
turning their attention to agricultural pursuits, and, with 
but few of the necessary utensils in their possession, al- 
ready produce sufficient, in some instances, to meet their 
every want. Among some of the tribes hunting has been 
almost entirely abandoned, many individuals looking 
wholly to the soil for support." * The reader will ob- 
serve that the above statement is directly and positively 
at variance with that of the article ; yet the writer in the 
Catholic World has the effrontery to state: ''It seems, 
then, that it took twelve missionaries seven years to con- 
vert two savages, at an expense of over ;^ 40, coo for one 
year at least." 

Even if this story about two converts were true, it would 
be easy to find its parallel in the history of missions in 
other lands. The first missionary in China reported only 
eleven converts in twenty-seven years. From a worldly 
point of view, this might be counted a failure; especially 

* Senate Executive Document 37, p. 15. 



112 The Story of Marcus Whitman, 

if we ignore, as this writer has ignored, all the preparatory 
and incidental work which in subsequent years brought 
hundreds into the Church of Christ. 

Dr. Judson labored five years in India before he saw any 
fruits of his work. But the remarkable results which fol- 
lowed showed that his labors were not in vain. So the 
Protestant missionaries in Oregon were laying broad and 
permanent foundations, preparing the soil and sowing the 
gospel seed, which would have yielded an abundant and 
gracious harvest if the missionaries had not been massa- 
cred or driven away. They might have got together large 
numbers of the Indians, as did the priests, baptized their 
children, sprinkled their parents with holy water, and re- 
ported them as faithful converts and members of the Chris- 
tian Church. But their method of procedure was entirely 
different — as widely so as Protestantism from Romanism, 
and the wisdom of their course was proved by its final results. 

Where did this writer get his information about ;^4o,ooo 
expenditure in a single year by Dr. Whitman and his col- 
leagues? After the most diligent search, we can discover 
nothing like it; everything, indeed, points the other way, 
confirming what Gen. Joel Palmer says: *' In this lonely 
situation they [Spalding and wife] have spent the best part 
of their days for no other compensation than a scanty sub- 
sistence." Writing of a visit to Dr. Whitman he says : 

**He took occasion to inform us of many incidents. 
Among other things, he related that during his residence 
in this country, he had been reduced to such necessity for 
want of food as to be compelled to slay his horse ; stating 
that within that period (ten years) no less than thirty-two 
horses had been served up at his table." 



Missions of the American Board. 113 

To the same purport is what the Sacramento (CalO 
Union published, when reviewing the labors of these mis- 
sionaries : "All these results were accomplished at an ex- 
pense to the American Board of Missions of $500 per 
annum for each mission family ; the enterprise and indefat- 
igable industry of the missionaries did the rest with native 
help."* 

If necessary, much additional testimony could be given 
showing that at the very time the missionaries are repre- 
sented as having expended a large sum of money, they were 
so poor that they had to labor with their own hands. We 
can account for the misstatement only on one of two sup- 
positions: either the writer confounds the Methodist mis- 
sions with those of the American Board, or he designedly 
substitutes the one for the other with a slight change of 
figures. 

The Catholic World article further states that the re- 
maining four years, *' the years intervening between this 
time and their entire discontinuance, show no converts at 
all. Business was entirely suspended, as far as spiritual 
affairs were concerned." 

No proper proof is given to sustain this assertion, and 
on the best documentary evidence we pronounce it 
untrue. 

The preceding years constituted a period of trial and 
discouragement, so much so, indeed, that serious thoughts 
were entertained of giving up the stations. But in the 
spring of 1842, affairs took a much more favorable turn. 
The attendance upon the schools largely increased ; a 
series of meetings among the Nez Perces resulted in the 

* Sacramento Union, July lo, 1869. 



114 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

conversion and admission to the church of seven of their 
number ; and the Sabbath congregations among the 
Cayuses were larger and more attentive. *' There was 
abundant evidence that the truth was exerting a restraining 
influence over most of the Indians." 

Nine Nez Perces were received into the church in 1843, 
and it was then expected that twenty-five or thirty others 
would be received in a short time, but of these we have 
no record. Ten more were approved for church fellow- 
ship in June, 1844; and at the same time, 200 were in 
Sabbath-school, and two prayer-meetings were sustained. 
Does this look as if "business was entirely suspended, as 
far as spiritual affairs were concerned " ? 

Owing to the massacre and the resultant war with the 
Indians of Oregon, Rev. Mr. Spalding was obliged to 
retire from his mission among the Nez Perces. But while 
denied the privilege of direct labors for them, his interest 
in their spiritual welfare remained unabated. Rev. Dr. 
EUinwood, Secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign 
Missions, of New York, who has given special attention to 
this subject, states that ''when Mr. Spalding was threescore 
and ten, he was permitted to baptize nearly 700 persons 
in the three years ending 1874." Does this look as if the 
spiritual results of the mission were a failure? 

The author of this article in the Catholic World quotes 
further depreciatory evidence from that unfailing the- 
saurus, Vicar-General Brouillet's pamphlet. The first 
witness called is Mr. Thomas McKay, a half-breed inter- 
preter of the Hudson Bay Company ; the second, John 
Baptist Gervais; the third. Dr. Poujade. We have not 
the means by which we can identify the last two men, but 



Missions of the American Board. 115 

their names clearly indicate their connection with the 
same Company. The first two represent Dr. Whitman 
and Mr. Spalding as saying that they had ceased to teach 
the Indians because they would not listen ; and these words 
are put into Mr. Spalding's mouth: "The Indians have 
been getting worse every day for two or three years back ; 
they are threatening to turn us out of the missions. A few 
days ago, they tore down my fences ; and I do not know 
what the Missionary Board of New York means to do. 
It is a fact that we are doing no good ; when the emigra- 
tion passes, the Indians run off to trade, and return worse 
than when we came among them." 

It must be conclusive to any fair-minded man that Mr. 
Spalding did not give Dr. Poujade the information he says 
he did. It is simply incredible that the former should 
speak of the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign 
Missions, of Boston, whose missionary he was, as "the 
Missionary Board of New York." The reference is to the 
dissatisfaction shown by some Indians because the whites 
did not visit them more frequently for purposes of trade. 
This we learn from General Palmer's book. Travels over 
the Rocky Mountains.'^ 

It is not now possible to ascertain whether McKay and 
the rest really stated what is here reported ; nor do we 
care. We do not regard them, or the author who quotes 
them, as trustworthy. There is an abundance of disinter- 
ested and reliable testimony accessible to the public to 
disprove all they have charged, and to show the character 
of the missionaries and the value of their labors ; but we 

*p. 130. 



tt6 The Story of Ma7-cus Whitman. 

have not space for a tithe of it. General Pahiier, after a 
visit to Dr. Whitman's station, says: 

" The condition of the savages has been greatly amelio- 
rated, and their improvement is chiefly attributable to the 

missionary residents They recognize the change 

which has taken place, and are not ignorant that it has 
been effected by the efforts and labors of the missionaries. 
.... They have embraced the Christian religion, and 
appear devout in their espousal of Christian doctrines. 
The entire time of the missionaries is devoted to the 
cause for which they have forsaken their friends and 
kindred. Their privations and trials have been great, but 
they have borne them with humility and meekness, and the 
fruits of their devotion are now manifest, and if any class 
of people deserve well of their country, or are entitled to 
the thanks of a Christian community, it is the mission- 
aries."* 

Speaking of the Nez Perces of Mr. Spalding's mission, 
the same writer says : 

"They have made considerable advances in cultivating 
the soil, and have large droves of horses, and many of 
them are raising large herds of cattle. Mr. and Mrs. 
Spalding have kept up a school, and many of the Indians 
have made great proficiency in spelling, reading and writ- 
ing. Mr. Spalding has made some translations from the 
Scriptures, and among others from the book of Matthew. 
They (the Indians) owe much of their superior qualifica- 
tions to the missionaries who are among them. Mr. Spald- 
ing and family have labored among them for ten years 
assiduously, and the increasing wants and demands of the 

* Palmer's Travels over the Rocky Mountains, 1845, p. 57. 



Missions of the American Board. 117 

natives require an additional amount of labor. Mr. Spald- 
ing must now attend not only to raising produce for his 
own family, but for numerous families of Indians, to act 
as teacher and spiritual guide, as physician, etc."* 

The Oregon Spectator^ in its issue of July 13, 1848, con- 
tained an article from the pen of Judge A. E. Wait, 
saying : 

"We have seen a disposition to undervalue the objects 
and efforts of the missionaries. This is wrong ; and a 
moment's reflection will satisfy all of the injustice of imput- 
ing selfish motives to the missionaries. The importance 
of the country as described by them brought the citizens of 
Oregon here. We can readily see what brought the Hud- 
son Bay Company here. But what brought the mission- 
aries, who, with their lives in their hands, led the way, 
with their wives, into the country, when it was almost 
unknown, and entirely unappreciated? It would appear 
that there is but one answer. It was the high and holy 
estimation which they placed upon the importance of souls, 
and the command of their Great Master in heaven." 

Later and valuable evidence is borne by Mr. J. W. 
Anderson, Indian agent for the Nez Perces, in 1862, to 
the good done by the Protestant missions : 

'' Although Mr. Spalding had been absent from the tribe 
many years, yet they retained all the forms of worship 
which he had taught them. Many of them have prayers 
night and morning in their lodges. In my opinion, Mr. 
Spalding, by his own personal labors, has accomplished 
more good in this tribe than all the money expended by 
the government has been able to effect." 
*p. 128. 



ii8 The Story of Marcus WJiitman. 

Rev. Mr. Eells, writing of the Nez Perce and Cayuse 
tribes in 1855, at the time of the conclusion of the treaty 
of Walla Walla, says : 

"All reports agreed that two or three lodges of the 
Cayuses, numbering about forty-five persons,* and about 
one-third of the three thousand Nez Perces, had kept up 
regular family and public worship. They sang from the 
Nez Perce hymn book, and read in their own language the 
Gospel of Matthew which had been furnished them by 

Mr. Spalding before the mission closed Many of 

them kept up their knowledge of reading and writing so 
well that they took notes at the council, and made copies 
of the treaties and speeches, eight years after the mission 
closed. They were the chief agents in securing a peaceful 
council and the treaty. At that time they also expressed a 
strong desire that religious teachers should again be sent 
among them." 

On pages 1 6 and 1 7 of the Senate document we have the 
following important and decisive testimony respecting Rev. 
Mr. Spalding, by Mr. Edward R. Geary, former Superin- 
tendent of the territory : 

'' His familiar acquaintance with the native language, 
reduced by him to a written state, several school books 
being prepared and portions of Scripture translated by 
him, and printed on the first press on this coast, the 
only instance of the kind, it is believed, among the Indian 
tribes on these Pacific shores. These books are held at this 
time above all price by the Nez Perces. 

" His great, perhaps unparalleled success as a missionary 

* This tribe was never very numerous, though wealthy and powerful. It 
had now become nearly extinct. 



Missions of the American Board. 119 

in Christianizing that people and introducing the usages of 
civilization among them during the eleven years spent with 
them, and until driven away in the year 1847, is attested 
by the superior intelligence, enterprise, and good order 
still characterizing and distinguishing them from the sur- 
rounding tribes. To this, hundreds of our citizens, civil 
and military officers, miners, travelers, and others of most 
reliable character, bear a uniform testimony. Among 
these we would name Commodore Wilkes, an eye-witness 
in 1841 ; Rev. Gustavus Hines in 1843, Gen. Joel Palmer 
in 1846, Colonel Steptoe, Agent Anderson, and Governor 
Daniels. The country, on the arrival of Mr. Spalding in 
1836, was emphatically a wilderness; uncultivated, and 
with not a hoe, plow, or hoof of cattle; the savages 
starving on their meagre supply of roots and fishes, and 
ignorant of letters, of agriculture, of the Sabbath, and of 
human salvation. 

'* That this scene should so soon be changed, the * desert 
to bud and blossom,' the fields to wave with grain, 
15,000 to 20,000 bushels of grain harvested yearly by the 
Indians, orchards and gardens planted, cattle roving in 
bands, schools established, in which from 100 to 500 souls 
were in daily attendance, women spinning, over 100 pro- 
fessors adorning the Christian faith, a church organized 
and family altars erected, speaks volumes for the fidelity and 
efficiency of Mr. Spalding and his estimable wife." 



CHAPTER X. 



ROMAN CATHOLIC MISSIONS. 



THE author of the article in the Catholic World 2&' 
signs the year 1838 as the beginning of the Romish 
missions in Oregon, when Rev. Messrs. Blanchet and 
Demerse arrived at Walla Walla by the annual overland 
boats of the Hudson Bay Company. As the records show, 
they at once entered upon missionary work, passing from 
post to post of the Company, being furnished by its agents 
with every facility for travel. The missionaries of the 
American Board had begun their work eighteen months 
before, directing all their efforts to civilize, educate and 
Christianize the Indians, and to induce them to give up 
their roaming habits and engage in agriculture and stock- 
raising. This may prove slower than some other meth- 
ods, but who will deny that it is better, if we wish to secure 
permanent and valuable results ? 

On the other hand, the method pursued by the Jesuit 
priests as described by Father DeSmet, in his History 
of Ro7nan Catholic Missions, seems to have consisted 
mainly, if not wholly, in baptizing the Indians, young and 
old, so far as they could be induced to receive the ordi- 
nance. On page 32 of this history we are told that "Mr. 
Blanchet baptized all the children that were brought to 
him in the course of his journey;" and on page 35 that 

120 



Ro7nan Catholic Missions. 121 

Mr. Demerse in 1841 penetrated to Fort Langley, *'and 
there baptized 700 children, they receiving the sacrament 
of regeneration." Bishop Blanchet, subsequently writing 
about them to the Bishop of Quebec, says, '* Many of 
them already enjoy the fruits of regenerating grace." 

A similar scene is thus described by Father DeSmet : 
'^ The children were arranged along the sea-coast j I dis- 
tributed to each a small piece of paper with a name writ- 
ten thereon ; and immediately commenced the ceremony. 
It was about ten o'clock in the morning, and I did not 
finish before night. The new Christians number 102." 
On page 59 we have an, account of the wholesale baptism 
of 150 more children by this same priest, at another sta- 
tion ; and on page 107 we read: ''More than 100 were 
presented for baptism, and eleven old men were borne to 
me on skins, who seemed only waiting the regenerating 
waters, to depart home and repose in the bosom of their 
divine Saviour." On page 127 it is recorded: ''I admin- 
istered the sacrament of baptism to 105 persons, among 
whom were twenty adults. An imposing ceremony termi- 
nated the exercises of the day. Amongst a general salute 
from the camp, a large cross was elevated." On pages 208 
and 209, Father DeSmet describes his visit to a tribe of 
Indians, the Pointed Hearts, with whom he remained three 
days, teaching a select few the Hail Mary, the Command- 
ments and the Apostles' Creed. On the second day, he 
says, ''I baptized all their small children and 24 adults;" 
and he concludes: " Nor have I elsewhere seen more con- 
vincing proofs of conversion to God." 

On page 212 he speaks of Rev. Mr. Parker having, in 
1836, broken down a cross which had been erected over 



122 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

the grave of a child by some Catholic Iroquois,* and adds : 
'* Were he who destroyed it to return now, he would find 
the image of Jesus Christ crucified, borne on the breasts of 
more than 4000 Indians." He gives a further account on 
page 224 of baptizing 190 Indians, and then again 418; 
of 500 baptized the year before ; of 196 on Christmas 
day ; then of 350 by Fathers Mengarini and Point ; mak- 
ing a total of 1654 souls, "wrested from the power of the 
devil." 

What this new and patent method of wresting the sav- 
ages from the power of the devil was, let the same writer 
inform us, as he does on page 283, where he describes the 
teaching of these Jesuits: '*' They (the Indians) were told 
that the Sacrament of Extreme Unction had the power 
not only to purify the soul, but to restore health to the 
body ; it did not occur to them to doubt the one more 

than the other They have great faith in the sign 

of the cross I saw a father and mother bending 

over the cradle of an only son who was about to die. 
They made their best efforts to suggest to him to make the 
sign of the cross, and the child having raised his little 
hand to his forehead, made the consoling sign and imme- 
diately expired." 

The effect of such teaching is thus stated . " It is 
worthy of remark that of all the adults who had not yet 
received baptism, and all who united to prepare for their 
first communion, not one was judged unworthy to receive 
the sacrament. Their simplicity, piety, charity, and espe- 
cially their faith, were admirable." 

* A most unlikely story, renting probably on tbe evidence of some half- 
breed Catholic. 



Roman Catholic Missions, 123 

After this wholesale method of making converts to their 
church had been pursued for years by these priests, travel- 
ing from one fort to another, backed up by the powerful 
influence of the Hudson Bay Company, we are prepared to 
hear Father DeSmet claim that " 6000 savages were 
brought within the fold of the Christian Church." P. 46. 

These labors were carried on in this way during the 
intervening years until 1847, ^^^^ 7^^^ of the massacre ; and 
what the results were twenty-eight years afterwards, we 
will allow Mr. Gray and Colonel Dow to tell us. 

In reply to the query, What good have the missionaries 
done to the Indians? Mr. Gray says:* *' If this question 
applied alone to the Jesuit missionaries brought to the 
country by the Hudson Bay Company, we would say un- 
hesitatingly. None at all. What few Indians there are now 
\n the country that have been baptized by them, and have 
learned the religious catechisms, are to-day more hope- 
lessly depraved, and are really poorer and more degraded 
than they were at the time we visited them twenty-two 
years since, looking carefully at their moral and pecuniary 
condition then and now." 

In the Oregon Herald oi May 5, 1866, we find an arti- 
cle by Colonel Dow, on the Roman Catholic Mission of 
Coeur d'Alene, spoken of invariably by Fathers DeSmet 
and Hoikin as their most successful mission west of the 
mountains : '' From an acquaintance with twelve tribes of 
Indians, among whom the gospel has been preached, and 
the forms, mysteries, and ceremonies of the Catholic 
church introduced, I have failed to see a soul saved, or 
one single spark of Indian treachery, cruelty or barbarism 
♦P. 593. 



124 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

extinguished The balance of their virtues — steal- 
ing, drinking and supreme laziness — they possess in as 
large a share as they did before the heart of St. Alene was 
sent among them. I would like to give a favorable por- 
trait of this mission and its occupants if I could. I would 
like to say that the reverend fathers were neat, cleanly, in- 
telligent, hospitable individuals, but there are too many by 
whom it would be pronounced false. I would like to say 
they were sowing the seed of civilization and cultivating 
it successfully in the untutored mind of the poor red man, 

but truth forbids I say not these things with any 

reference to the Catholic church or its belief, nor am I 
forgetful of what I have read of the Jesuits of St. Bernard 
and their acts of humanity : but for the filthy, worthless, 
superannuated relics of Italian ignorance who have posted 
themselves midway between the extremes of Pacific and 
Atlantic civilization, acknowledging no law save that of 
their church, I have not the slightest particle of respect." 

One of the Jesuit fathers (Joset), in the Indian 
Sketches,'^ page 6t, confesses that it took him nearly 
fifteen years to master the language of the tribe far 
enough to ^' teach the children fourteen lessons in the 
catechism," and says that he had been constantly at it 
since his arrival. In very much less time the Protestant 
missionaries had translated large portions of the Bible 
into the native language, prepared school books, estab- 
lished schools and churches, and induced the Indians to 
settle and cultivate land for their own support. 

The contrast between the two methods of civilization 
and their results is very marked, but only what the history 

* A Roman Catholie publication. 



Roman Catholic Missions. 125 

of Roman Catholicism in other countries would lead us to 
expect. What was to be looked for from a score or more 
of priests running round from one post to another, admin- 
istering sacraments wholesale to the savages and occasion- 
ally stopping long enough to get them to memorize a few 
lessons from the Lyons Catechism? How could such in- 
structions be expected to elevate, civilize and Christianize 
Indians more than the heathen of other countries? That 
they did not, there is abundant evidence; yet, were we 
to believe what the Jesuits have published about their 
Oregon missions, we should conclude that, of the forty 
different tribes of Indians they had visited, they had 
succeeded in converting nearly all, and making them 
pious, peaceable, humane Christians ! 

The testimony as to the present and abiding influences 
exerted upon the Indians by the Protestant missionaries is 
abundant and in striking contrast with that of the Roman 
Catholics. The last report of the Board of Indian Com- 
missioners, says Rev. Dr. S. H. Willey in 1885, gives the 
following as the number of Presbyterian members: Nez 
Perces, Lapwai 221, Kamiah 218, Umatillas 78, Spo- 
kanes 146, Shokomish 44, Dungenes 27; the total, 734. 

It will be remembered that Indian wars followed the 
massacre for ten years, and that it was not until 1859 
that the Territory was declared open to settlement, when 
Rev. Mr. Spalding hastened back to the Nez Perces, who 
eagerly welcomed him, and through his Christian instruc- 
tion and labors 694 of the tribe were received into the 
church. 

Another resultant of the American Board's mission was 
the founding of Whitman College, designed as a memo- 



1 26 The Story of Marcus IVhitman. 

rial of the martyred missionary. It stands near his grave, 
and will perpetuate both his memory and that of his asso- 
ciate, Rev. Dr. Gushing Eells, who laid the foundation of 
the institution, which, with its president and its five reg- 
ular and four associate professors, is continuing the be- 
nevolent work begun more than half a century ago. 

If there are such abiding fruits of the early mission 
work with this fading race, notwithstanding the unpre- 
cedented difficulties that it encountered, *'We may well 
ask," says Dr. Willey, "what might it have been without 
them? What would our missions have been had they 
been undisturbed and continuous for all these years?" 

The article in the Catholic World proceeds with a brief 
account of the Romanist missions in Oregon, but says 
that the visits of the Jesuit priests were ''few and far 
between till the 5th of September, 1847," when, as we 
learn from another authority, 25 priests and 15 nuns 
arrived and entered vigorously upon mission work among 
the Indians. 

This statement, the reader will notice, differs widely 
from that given on page 96 of the History of Roina?i 
Catholic Missions, by Father DeSmet : ''The first mis- 
sion at Nesqualy was made by Father Demerse, who cele- 
brated the first mass in the fort on April the 2 2d,* the 
day after his arrival. His visit at such a time was forced 
upon him by the establishment of a Methodist mission 
there for the Indians." 

And on page 104, DeSmet further says that Rev. Mr. 

* This, I suppose, was in April, 1837, for Gray says that " on the arrival 
of Dr. Whitman and party the Hudson Bay Company sent for Blanchet 
and Demerse and established their headquarters at Vancouver." 



Roman Catholic Missions. 127 

Demerse's presence was needed at Vancouver '* in order 
'to oppose the efforts Minister Daniel Lee was making 
amongst the Indians at the fort." The evil the latter 
was doing is thus stated : ^* To deny the necessity of 
baptism is to deny the existence of original sin ; and to 
deny the existence of original sin is to deny the necessity 
of redemption and to declare that religion is a fable, for 
such are the consequences following from the denial of 
original sin; and, alas! such was nevertheless the hor- 
rible and damnable doctrine which the Methodist minis- 
ters of Willamette preached to the Canadians." 

And we learn from Brouillet, page 78, that ''Fathers 
Blanchet and Demerse passed by Walla Walla in 1838; in 
1839 Father Demerse spent three weeks in teaching the 
Indians and baptizing their children; and in 1840 he 
had made there a mission so fruitful that the Protestant 
missionaries had got alarmed. Father DeSmet, after vis- 
iting the Flatheads in 1840, had come and established a 
mission among them in 1S41 ; and from that time down 
to tlie arrival of the Bishop, the Indians of Walla Walla 
and of the upper Columbia had never failed to be vis- 
ited yearly, either by Father Demerse or by some of the 
Jesuits." 

Confirmatory of this, and showing the animus of these 
priests toward Protestantism, we have a letter of Father 
DeSmet to Bishop Blanchet, dated September 28, 1841, 
in which he writes : '' I do not doubt but that our excel- 
lent governor. Dr. McLaughlin, will give you all the 
assistance in his power. It is very fortunate for our 
holy religion that this noble-hearted man should be at 
the head of affairs of the honorable Hudson Bay Com- 



128 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

pany. He protected it before our arrival in these re- 
gions. He still gives it his support by word and example 
and many favors." He then gives an account of the dif- 
ferent Protestant missions, and adds: "In the midst of 
so many adversaries we try to keep our ground firmly; 
to increase our numbers and to visit various parts, par- 
ticularly where the danger is most pressing. We also 
endeavor to anticipate the others and to inculcate the 
Catholic principles in those places where error has not 
yet found a footing, or even to arrest the progress of evil, 
to dry it up at its source Tiie Methodist mis- 
sions are failing rapidly This spring, Mr. De- 

merse withdrew from the Methodists a whole village of 
savages, situate at the foot of the Willamette Falls." * 

It appears, then, that as early as 1837 or 1838 priests 
were going about baptizing children, holding missions 
and making many converts after their peculiar and easy 
methods. 

The object of placing the date of the permanent occu- 
pancy of the country by Romish priests as late as 1847 
is obvious ; it is to have the reader believe that they were 
not in the country to poison the minds of the Indians 
against the Protestant missionaries. 

The article in the Catholic World complains that Dr. 
Whitman did not receive these priests with all the cor- 
diality he should, but "treated them with great incivility 

and disrespect He refused to sell provisions to 

the bishop, and protested that he would not assist the 
missionaries unless he saw them in starvation." 

So far as we can discover, this charge rests entirely on 
* P. 229. 



Roman Catholic Missions. 129 

Brouillet's murder pamphlet; and it is plain that he had 
a powerful motive to represent Dr. Whitman in this dis- 
courteous light. But even if Dr. Whitman said and did 
what is here attributed to him, was that a sufftcient reason 
to incite the Indians against him and those who fell with 
him? That Dr. Whitman could ever speak or act in this 
way,' no one acquainted with him will believe for a mo- 
ment.' It was entirely foreign to his character and his 
ordinary conduct. Abundant testimony is on record as 
to his uniform kindness and unbounded hospitality shown 
to all needing these friendly offices at his hands. 

We have space for only one witness on this point. 
Rev. Myron Eells, son of one of the missionaries, in his 
History of Indian Missions, after speaking of Dr. Whit- 
man's valuable services to the immigrants of 1843. and 
of his furnishing them a guide from his mission to the 
Dalles free of cost, says: * " During subsequent years the 
hands and heart of Dr. Whitman were also full to aid the 
poor immigrant. A generosity fully equal to the golden 
rule was usually practiced, so that sometimes by the be- 
ginning of winter he found himself almost without sup- 
plies Those too poor to proceed further some- 
times wintered with him, so that at the time of his mas- 
sacre there were seventy persons at his station 

Of these, seven were immigrant children whose parents 
had died and whom he had adopted. On account of this 
kindness, the citizens of the Willamette were probably 
more ready to volunteer in order to avenge his death than 
they would have been for that of almost any other person 
on the Pacific coast." 
* p. 182. 



ijb The Story of Marcus JVhilman. 

All accounts agree that Bishop Blanchet arrived at Fort 
Walla Walla September 5, 1847, ^^^ remained until Oc- 
tober 26, and while there met Dr. Whitman. On Octo- 
ber 26, Towatowe (Young Chief), a Cayuse chief, came 
in from hunting, and Blanchet had an interview with him, 
which is thus described in the pamphlet, Murder of Dr. 
Whitman, page 46: '^The bishop asked him if he was 
disposed to receive a priest for him and his young men, 
telling him he could only give him one for the whole 
nation; and if the Cayuses wished to avail themselves of 
his services, they would do well to come to an under- 
standing together concerning the location of the mis- 
sion." The chief told the bishop he wished a priest, 
and "that he could take his house and as much land as 
he wanted."* So far this statement bears the impress 
of truth, but mark the proposal which follows from this 
Indian chief: *'But as a means of reuniting the Cayuses, 
who had been heretofore divided, and in order to facili- 
tate their religious instruction, he suggested the idea of 
establishing the mission near Dr. Whitman's, at the camp 
of Tilokaikt, as there was more land there, and it was 
more central." 

''The previous history of this chief," says Gray, **as 
was given by Rev. Messrs. Hines, Perkins and Dr. White, 
all goes to prove that he never made such a suggestion ; 
and no one acquainted with Indian character will believe 
for a moment that he did make it." f 

Bishop Blanchet, either because he was not satisfied 

* The reader will observe the willingness of the Indians to give their 
lands to missionaries, 
t Oregon, p. 402. 



Roman Catholic Missions. 131 

with this proposal or for some different reason, sent for 
Tilokaikt, who was a relative of Towatowe, on October 
29, and five days later a council was held, at which it is 
said the Indians offered to drive Dr. Whitman away from 
his station and give it to Blanchet, but the bishop de- 
clined. This rests on the statement of Thomas McKay,* 
plainly made to acquit the priests. Whether true or not, 
the fact remains that within three days Brouillet went, by 
order of Bishop Blanchet, to look at Tilokaikt's lands 
near Dr. Whitman's station; but the chief had changed 
his mind and was not willing to fulfill his promise and 
give the land. Brouillet finally accepted Young Chief's 
offer, quoting Tilokaikt, however, as saying: ''He had 
no other place to give me but that of Dr. Whitman, 
whom he intended to send away," and his own reply: 
"I would not have the place of Dr. Whitman." This 
Cayuse Indian, who was so anxious for the priests, was 
engaged in the massacre, and while Dr. Whitman was 
still breathing, deliberately chopped his face to pieces. 

That the priests and the agent of the Hudson Bay Com- 
pany wanted Dr. Whitman's location, we have the evi- 
dence of Mr. John Kimzey, who was at the fort the same 
fall: 

" During my stay of about two days, Mr. McBean,-f- in 
the presence of my wife, said : ' The fathers have offered 
to purchase Dr. Whitman's station, but Dr. Whitman has 

* An Indian trader of some note in the mountains. He is a step-son of 
Dr. McLaughlin by an Indian mother. His father was massacred on the 
Tonquin. I have heard him declare that he will yet be known on the 
coast as the avenger of \i\oo6..— Journey Across the Mountains, p. 82, by 
John D. Townsend. 

t Agent of the Hudson Bay Company. 



132 The Story of Jifarct/s \Vhitina7i. 

refused to sell.' He said they had requested the doctor 
to fix his own price and they would meet it, but the 
doctor had refused to sell on any conditions. I asked 
him who he meant by the fathers. He said: 'The holy 
fathers, the Catholic priests.' He said the holy fathers 
were about to commence a mission at the mouth of the 
Umatilla, one in the upper part of the Umatilla, one near 
Dr. Whitman's station if they could not get hold of the 
station, one in several other places which I cannot name. 
He said : ' Dr. Whitman would better leave the country or 
the Indians will kill him; we are determined to have 
his station.' He further said: 'Mr. Spalding will also 
soon have to leave this country.' " * 

On November 27, Bishop Blanchet, with his secretary 
and Father Brouillet, went to Umatilla, the place first 
offered by Young Chief Here he received a visit from 
Dr. Whitman the next day. It came about through a 
request of two Walla Walla chiefs on the Umatilla River, 
that the doctor should visit the sick in their villages. 
Accompanied by Mr. Spalding, he started on the journey 
Saturday evening, November 27, arriving the same night 
at the lodge of Istikus, a friendly chief Crossing the 
river the next day, he prescribed for the sick persons 
and afterwards called upon the priests at their new sta- 
tion. Being anxious about the sick at his own mission, 
he soon left for home and arrived there late in the night 
of the 28th or early the next morning; and on the after- 
noon of the 29th Dr. and Mrs. Whitman and eight others 

* Gray, p. 463. Mr. Kimzey's deposition is confirmed by the oath of 
Mr. R. S. Wilcox, who heard the same or a similar statement from Mr. 
Kimzey in camp the night after he left Fort Walla Walla. 



Roman Catholic Missions. 133 

were murdered. One man was shot on the 30th, coming 
from the mill to the station; another escaped, but died 
of exposure or was killed by Indians; three children 
died ; and eight days afterwards two young men were 
killed. Fifteen persons in all perished in the mas- 
sacre. The Indians were instigated to the deed by Joe 
Stanfield, a Canadian Frenchman; Joe Lewis, a Cana- 
dian Indian; and Nicholas Finlay, a French half-breed — 
understood to be Roman Catholics.* Some of these took 
part in the killing, and all were busy in plundering the 
houses and property of the victims. 

The first white man at Dr. Whitman's station after the 
murders was Brouillet, who came to Tilokaikt's camp on 
the evening of November 30, between seven and eight 
o'clock, and there learned of the massacre. Remaining 
all night at the camp, he baptized some children in the 
morning and then visited the scene of the tragedy, to 
comfort the survivors and bury the dead. Leaving on the 
same afternoon for his own station, he met Mr. Spalding 
on the way to Dr. Whitman's, informed him of the mas- 

* BrouiUet admits that Stanfield was a Catholic, but denies that the 
others were. 

Lewis is said to have come from Canada with a party of priests and 
Frenchmen in 1847, and, being left by them at Fort Boise, made his way 
to Dr. Whitman's station. While at Fort Boise he spoke of a great over- 
turn which would soon take place at Dr. Whitman's and in the Willa- 
mette. He made trouble among the Indians, and Dr. Whitman fur- 
nished him with shoes and clothes and induced him to leave with an 
immigrant who needed a teamster. Deserting the latter, he returned to 
Dr. Whitman's and became a leading conspirator. 

Finlay was formerly in the employ of the Hudson Bay Company, and 
at the time was staying with the Indians near the mission. The mas- 
sacre was planned in his lodge, and he afterwards claimed Mrs. Hayes as 
his wife. It is said that he was shot at last for murdering a guide ia 
the employ of a company of United States troops. 



134 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

sacre and advised and helped him to escape. Mr. Spal- 
ding fled, and after some days and nights of terrible suf- 
fering reached his own station and joined his wife, who in 
the meantime "had been protected from all harm," says 
Mrs. Victor, ''by the faithful Nez Perces." 

Three of the women who were spared from the slaughter 
were treated with fiendish cruelty by the Indians; and 
those who survived, as also the children, were finally 
ransomed. 



I 



CHAPTER XL 

PROLONGED CONTROVERSY OVER THE MASSACRE. 

N defending themselves from the charge of responsi- 
^ bility for the Whitman massacre, the accused parties 
offered first the testimony of an Indian who was present 
at the massacre, as related by one R. T. Lockwood, who 
elicited it by questioning. It is used to prove that the 
Indians had already determined to kill Dr. Whitman, be- 
fore the priests came and attempted to get possession of 
his station. 

The Catholic World article describes Mr. Lockwood as 
''an old resident of Oregon." This is not strictly true, 
as he only came to the State in 1851, and consequently 
was not a resident at the time of the murder. His moral 
status and his credibility as a witness we have not the 
means of verifying. 

In a letter to Vicar-General BrouiUet, published in the 
Catholic Sentinel, we have Mr. Lockwood's statement at 
much greater length than in the article under review. 
At best it is but hearsay evidence, and from an Indian 
who may or may not have had a share in the crime him- 
self, and who naturally wished to exculpate his fellows. 
There is nothing new or important in his testimony, as 
he tells the usual story about the Protestant missionaries 

135 



136 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

depriving the Indians of their lands,* etc. Mr. Lock- 
wood is clearly a willing witness, and his testimony was 
drawn from him by Brouillet for the purpose of shielding 
the Romish priests. 

This same letter of Lockwood's contains the statement 
also of a Mrs. Foster, ''one of the survivors" of the mur- 
der, who expresses the opinion that Blanchet did not have 
anything to do with the murder, and says that he "was 
very kind and tender toward the survivors." The most 
ever asserted has been that the priests, by their teachings 
and by their representations of the character and purposes 
of the Protestant missionaries, inflamed the minds of the 
Indians and excited their animosity — not that they were 
personally implicated in the crime. How competent this 
witness is, and what motives induced her to express her 
favorable opinion, the reader must judge for himself; 
especially in view of the sworn evidence, already ad- 
duced, that the priests did warn the Indians against Dr. 
Whitman and the religion he was teaching them, f 

* As to the value to be placed, in such circumstances, on the testimony 
of an Indian, let us hear what Mr. Brouillet says on page 86 of his account 
of the murder. He is speaking of the reports made by two Indians to 
Rev. Mr. Spalding, that the priests had told the Indians that the Protes- 
tant missionaries were poisoning them, and says: "Those reports can be 
of no credit, and prove nothing in the case. If in most parts of the States 
of the Union the testimony of Indians is never admitted as proof against 
the whites in any court of justice, it would be here inconsistent to make 
it the basis of public opinion." This is all very well ; but why not apply 
the same rule in all similar cases? In this very instance the statements 
of Indians are brought out by this Mr. Lockwood to prove that the In- 
dians had resolved upon killing Dr. Whitman before the priests came 
into that part of the country. The impartial reader will ask : " Is such 
testimony only valuable when it can be used to vilify Protestant and ex- 
culpate Roman Catholic missionaries?" 

t Since the above was written, a friend has sent me a copy of the Min- 
utes of the Congregational Association of Oregon and Washington for 



Prolonged Controversy over the Massacre. 137 

The accused parties allege, as a second cause of the 
massacre, the broken promises of Rev. Mr. Parker, who 
told the Indians, when selecting mission stations, that he 
would pay for the lands occupied, and that, besides, the 
Indians should receive a ship-load of goods yearly. These 
promises had not been fulfilled, they say, but Dr. Whit- 
man had appropriated their lands without right or com- 
pensation ; hence the distrust and anger of the Indians, 
and their desire to requite the bad faith of the mission- 
aries. 

This will be recognized as the old, old story, resting 
on no better basis than ''old" John Toupin, quoted 
from Brouillet's murder pamphlet, and already shown to 
be mireliable. In consonance with it, earnest efforts 
were made to defame the character of Dr. Whitman, in 

1S82, which contains the statement of a delegation of UmatiUa Indians, 
made by their friend and interpreter, Dr. WiUiam McKay. These In- 
dians were from the reservation to which the Cayuses were removed by 
the United States government. Their visit to the Association was to se- 
cure its influence to procure a section of land from the government for 
the Protestant part of the tribe, for church and school purposes, the same 
as the Catholics expect to obtain. 

Dr. McKay says that "there is a large and increasing number of these 
Indians, who have declared and do declare their faith in the teachings 
given them by Marcus Whitman. M. D. ; that they have always remem- 
bered them, and they have held meetings among themselves to talk 
about these things; that they have not been satisfied with the Roman 
Catholic teachings given on the reservation; that thirty of them have 
been baptized and a church organized; that they now have regular Sab- 
bath meetings and worship ; that they suffer opposition since they have 
held their own meetings; that they are denounced as Americans, and 
doomed to hen for claiming these rights of conscience, for withdrawing 
from the teachers set over them and for protesting against their teach- 
ings; that they are denounced for sending their children to the Govern- 
ment Industrial Training School at Forest Grove and told that it is a 
bad school; that their daughters will be ruined; that it is an American 
school and all who favor it will be lost." 



1 ^8 The Story of Marcus IVhitman, 

order to show that he was capable of the perfidious acts 
here charged. To this end, the writer in the Catholic 
World quotes the following paragraph from Mr. Gray, 
whom he is careful to describe to his readers as a 
** brother missionary"* of Dr. Whitman, the subject of 
the sketch: 

''A man of easy, don't-care habits, that could become 
all things to all men, and yet a sincere and earnest man, 
speaking his mind before he thought the second time, 
giving his views on all subjects without much considera- 
tion, correcting them when good reasons were presented, 
yet, when fixed in the pursuit of an object, adhering to it 
with unflinching tenacity. A stranger would consider him 
fickle and stubborn^ 

Here, again, we have an illustration of the defective 
casuistry of this Jesuit writer, in the shape of a badly 
garbled quotation. The italics are not Gray's, but the 
writer's. There is, moreover, a break in the sentence, 
and the quotation leaves off just where Mr. Gray brings 
out the good features of Dr. Whitman's character. The 
rest of the paragraph is as follows : 

''A stranger would consider him fickle and stubborn, 
yet he was sincere and kind and generous to a fault, de- 
voting every energy of his mind and body to the welfare 
of the Indians and objects of the mission." f 

Had the writer honestly presented the entire sentence 
it would have ruined the object for which it was quoted, 
for it shows that those who knew Dr. Whitman best 
esteemed him most. 

* Financial agent of the missions, 
t Oregon^ p. io8. 



Prolonged Controversy over the Massacre. 139 

Hon. Peter H. Burnett, the first governor of California 
and a Catholic, in his Recollections and Opinions of an 
Old Pioneer J page 249, gives us his impressions of Dr. 
Whitman's character : 

''I consider Dr. Whitman to have been a brave, kind, 
devoted and intrepid spirit, without malice and without 
reproach. In my be?t judgment, he made greater sacri- 
fices, endured more hardships and encountered more 
perils for Oregon than any other one man ; and his ser- 
vices were practically more efficient than those of any 
other, except, perhaps, those of Dr. Linn, United States 
senator from Missouri. I S2iy perhaps, for I am in doubt 
as to which of these two men did more in effect for 
Oregon." 

The next quotation by this writer (in the Catholic 
World^ is from Mrs. Victor's River of the West :'^ 

**The Americans had done them much harm. Years 
before, had not one of their missionaries suffered several 
of their people and the son of their chief to be slain in 
his company, yet himself escaped ? Had not the son of 
another chief (Elijah), who had gone to California to buy 
cattle, been killed by Americans for no fault of his own ? 
.... So far as regarded the missionaries, Dr. Whitman 
and his associates, they were divided ; yet so many looked 
on the doctor as an agent in promoting the settlement of 
the country with whites, it was thought best to drive him 
from the country, together with all the missionaries, sev- 
eral years before. Dr. Whitman had known that the 
Indians were displeased with his settlement among them. 
They had told him of it j they had treated him with 
* p. 400. 



14© The Story of Maracs Whitman, 

violence; they had attempted to outrage his wife, had 
burned his property, and had several times warned him 
to leave their country or they should kill him." 

We do not know the source of Mrs. Victor's informa- 
tion. She was not a resident of Oregon, and had no 
personal knowledge of what she states. It was probably 
derived from Brouillet, or J. Ross Browne's report, or 
some similar source. 

This authority is again misquoted. "Several years be- 
fore," at the close of the fourth sentence, belongs to the 
fifth, commencing "Dr. Whitman had known," etc.; 
and the italics are not the author's. Here we have an- 
other specimen of "the end justifying the means." This 
only serves to make the object clearer for which the quo- 
tation was made. 

Mr. Gray says : * 

"The Nez Perce chief was killed in open fight with the 
Sioux, on Platte River, after the party had fought three 
hours and killed fifteen and wounded eight of the Sioux. 
He was no connection of this Cayuse tribe, and only re- 
ferred to here for effect." 

The chief Elijah, the writer says, was "killed by Amer- 
icans for no fault of his own." The facts are that he and 
other Indians went to California to steal horses and cattle. 
They ran off some horses belonging to Spaniards and 
Americans, first killing the Indian guards in charge of 
them. Elijah and Young Chief were apprehended for 
the crime and tried by a military court. Young Chief 
was acquitted on the evidence of an American whose life 

* Oregon, p. 507. 



Prolonged Controversy over the Massacre. 141 

he had saved at the time the horses were stolen, while 
Elijah was shot to prevent similar raids. 

That this event had no connection with the massacre 
is very evident. The chief killed was a son of Yellow 
Serpent, of the Walla Walla tribe. These Indians had 
nothing to do with the massacre, and according to Mrs. 
Victor, page 415, were the only Indians who showed any 
kindness to the Americans on that dreadful day. Mr. 
McBean also states that the Walla Walla chief took no 
part in the murder. 

We are aware that afterwards, when a council of the 
Indians assembled to devise measures to prevent a war 
with the Americans, aiid for this purpose sent a letter to 
them, the Cayuse chiefs referred to the death of Elijah 
as one of the wrongs they had suffered, and proposed to 
forget it if the Americans would not punish them for the 
murders at Waiilatpu. This was clearly an afterthought 
on their part, and perhaps suggested by others; and it 
only shows how destitute they were of better reasons for 
the act. 

The object of Brouillet, who gives this matter more 
fully, and from whom Mrs. Victor most likely gained her 
knowledge, was to explain or justify the Whitman mas- 
sacre. In this he so far misleads his readers as to the 
real causes. The origin of the unfriendly feelings by 
some Indians toward Dr. Whitman is clearly stated by 
William Geiger, Jr., who was left in charge of the mis- 
sion station while Dr. Whitman was absent at Washing- 
ton : 

'* While he was gone I was in charge of his station among 
the Cayuse Indians, who informed me on many occasions 



142 The Story of Marcus IVJiitman. 

that the priests and half-breeds were urgent that they 
should drive Mr. Spalding and Dr. Whitman out of the 
country, so that they (the priests) could occupy the coun- 
try and the places of Whitman and Spalding. I asked 
them on many different occasions if they wanted Messrs. 
Spalding and Whftman to leave their country after they 
had been there so long and taught them so much, both 
in religion and civilization, and cultivating the soil, etc. 
They answered : * Oh, no ; it is the priests that are con- 
tinually desiring us to drive them away.' 

"And, again, in 1846, the priests became very urgent, 
and the Catholic Indians became so noisy about the mat- 
ter that the tribe held a great council about it. Dr. 
Whitman made them a speech. He told them his locks 
were getting gray. He had spent his best days in try- 
ing to do them good, but if they wished him to leave 
he would be ready to leave in two weeks. 

"After three hours of conference they made their reply' 
as follows : 

" 'When you first came to our country we knew nothing 
about cultivating the land and making a living in that 
way. We had no cattle, hogs, plows or hoes. Now we 
have all these, that you have assisted us to procure and 
taught us to use. Before you came we were always hun- 
gry in the winter; now we have plenty to eat and to 
spare. Formerly we knew but little of God ; now we 
worship him every day in our families. After receiving 
so much we do not wish you to leave us, but to stay with 
us as long as you live and occupy the place that you now 
occupy.' " 



Prolonged Controversy over the Massacre. 143 

Another form of this charge was that the missionaries 
were taking away the lands of the Indians. 

**The fulfillment of the laws which the agent recom- 
mended for their adoption .... occasioned suspicions 
in the minds of the Indians generally that the whites de- 
signed the ultimate subjugation of their tribes. They saw 
in the laws they had adopted a deep-laid scheme of the 
whites to destroy them and take possession of their coun- 
try. The arrival of a large party of immigrants about this 
time, and the sudden departure of Dr. Whitman to the 
United States with the avowed intention of bringing back 
with him as many as he could enlist for Oregon, served 

to hasten them to the above conclusions The 

great complaint of the Indians was that the Boston people 
(Americans) designed to take away their lands and reduce 
them to slavery." 

As this has been already refuted, it is sufficient to refer 
again to the well-known fact that in 1832 Indians came to 
St. Louis, pleading for missionaries ; to their earnest en- 
treaties of Rev. Mr. Parker in 1835, when he visited these 
and other tribes, that he would send them teachers ; to 
their offer of lands to the priests ; and to the testimony of 
Mr. Gray, who lived so long among them and who says 
there was not a band or tribe but was ready to give land 
to any white settler. There is proof positive, moreover, 
that the missionaries did not take nor use more land than 
was necessary for missionary purposes ; but that the minds 
of the Indians were inflamed by such tales, there is no 
question. 

The same author, Mrs. Victor, just quoted as authority 
to disparage the missionaries, says, pages 327 and 329 : 



144 The Story of Marcus Whtf?nan. 

"Dorio* (Baptiste), a half-breed, being well informed 
in Indian sentiments and influential as an interpreter 
among them, had wickedly inflamed the passions of the 
Indians by representing to them that it was useless making 
farms and building houses, as in a short time the whites 
would overrun their land and destroy everything, besides 
killing them.f .... The wicked Dorio still continued 
to poison their minds, and to stir up all the native selfish- 
ness and jealousy of the Indian character." 

We have the testimony of Chief Joseph also, showing 
the high esteem in which the missionaries were held by 
most of the Indians; and that they had not said ''any- 
thing about white men wanting to settle on our lands." 

The third line of defense is, that the massacre was 
caused by the Indians' belief that Dr. Whitman was poison- 
ing them. To substantiate this the writer in the Catholic 
World quotes from a letter of Sir James Douglas, chief 
factor of the Hudson Bay Company, written after the 
massacre, to S. N. Castle, Esq., of the Sandwich Islands. 

'' He hoped that time and instruction would produce 
a changa of mind — a better state of feeling toward the 
mission, and he might have lived to see his hopes 
realized, had not the measles and dysentery, following in 
the train of immigrants from the United States, made 
frightful ravages this year in the upper country. Many 
Indians have been carried off through the violence of the 
diseases, and others through their own imprudence. The 
Cayuse Indians of Waiilatpu, being sufferers in this general 
calamity, were incensed against Dr. Whitman for not 

* A Hudson Bay interpreter and a leader of the half-breeds, 
t Hines' Oregon confirms this statement of Mrs. Victor. 



Prolonged Controversy over the Massacre. 145 

exerting his supposed supernatural power in saving their 
lives. They carried this absurdity beyond the point of 
folly. Their superstitious minds became possessed of the 
horrible suspicion that he was giving poison to the sick, 
instead of wholesome medicine, with the view of working 
the destruction of the tribe, his former cruelty probably 
adding strength to their suspicions. Still, some of the 
reflecting had confidence in Dr. Whitman's integrity, and 
it was agreed to test the effects of the medicine he had 
furnished, on three of their people, one of whom was said 
to be in perfect health. They unfortunately died, and 
from that moment it was resolved to destroy the mission. 
It was immediately after burying the remains of these three 
persons that they repaired to the mission and murdered 
every man found there." 

The information given in this letter was procured 
through Agent McBean, in charge of Fort Nez Perce. 
Another agent of the Hudson Bay Company does not hesi- 
tate to call McBean ''a scoundrel;" and McBean's knowl- 
edge, it appears, was obtained from Brouillet. It was sent 
to Douglas by McBean's interpreter, who was at the mis- 
sion when the massacre occurred, and was kept there until 
Brouillet had prepared an account of it for transmission to 
McBean, which account he carried to Sir James Douglas 
at Fort Vancouver. The same man was entrusted also 
with the secret knowledge that three parties of Indians 
were about to start to destroy all the other Protestant mis- 
sions and American settlements in middle Oregon, includ- 
ing that at the Dalles ; and his instructions were that he 
might inform the Indians, but not the whites, of what had 
been and what was to be done. 



1 46 The Story of Marcus WhiUnan. 

Hon. A. Hinman accompanied the interpreter from the 
Dalles, not knowing the real purpose of his visit to Fort 
Vancouver. He testifies that they were thirty miles from 
the fort when McBean's interpreter for the first time made 
known to him what had occurred, and confessed that " the 
priests, McBean, and he were bad in trying to deceive 
him, and have his family and people killed by the 
Indians." 

Arriving at Vancouver, they went to Mr. Ogden's room 
and informed him of the massacre. His exclamation was: 
"Mr. Hinman, you can now see what opposition in re- 
ligion will do." The three then repaired to Sir James 
Douglas' room and told him of the crime that had been 
committed, when Mr. Ogden repeated what he had pre- 
viously said to Mr. Hinman. Douglas replied, " There 
may be other causes." 

We have a more extended account of this matter on 
p. 40 of Senate Executive Document j/, being a sworn 
statement made by Mr. Hinman in April, 1849. This 
says that the Frenchman — McBean's interpreter and mes- 
senger — gave as his reason for not telling the whites : 
"The priests tell me not to tell you and Americans at 
Dalles. If I tell you, they no pardon my sins." 

On going to Douglas' office Mr. Ogden said: "There, 
see what a war in religion has done. The good Doctor is 
dead. I knew there would be trouble when those priests 
went up." 

The letters concerning the massacre were then read, 
and also the plans for killing other Americans, including 
those at the Dalles, Mr. Hinman's place of residence. 
When Hinman asked why the Frenchman was forbidden 



Prolonged Controversy over the Massacre. 147 

to tell him, Douglas replied: ''You must remember, that 
man was in trying circumstances." 

We fail to understand what is meant by this, except that 
there was a conflict between the Frenchman's humanity 
and McBean's inhumanity; for Mr. Hinman explicitly 
states that the Frenchman said to him : " Mr. McBean told 
him to say nothing about it to them at the Dalles." 

When the Indians, who heard the news from the French 
messenger, told the whites at the Dalles, which they 
did after the messenger left, the whites could not believe 
it ; for the messenger himself had told Dr. Whitman's 
nephew and others that he had not seen Dr. Whitman for 
two weeks. 

McBean's letter to Sir James Douglas was afterwards 
demanded, and published in the Oregon Spectator of 
December 10, 1847. As it appeared there, the alleged 
cause of the murder is more specifically stated. It is 
attributed solely to the belief that Dr. Whitman was pois- 
oning the Indians for the purpose of securing their lands ; 
and the letter further gives currency to the story of a Mr. 
Rogers, who, in order to save his own life, had told the 
Indians that he once heard Dr. Whitman and Mr. Spald- 
ing devising measures to kill them off, and thus get posses- 
sion of their lands, cattle and horses. 

The charges are clearly disbelieved by the writer himself, 
and have all been proven false by those present at the mas- 
sacre. After giving them as current stories, the letter 
adds: ''These are only Indian reports, and no person can 
believe the Doctor capable of such an action, without being 
as ignorant and brutish as the Indians themselves." 

Why, then, circulate them? They had no better 



148 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

foundation than that they were told by Stanfield, Joe 
Lewis and Finlay. It is plain that they were given this 
wide currency for an evil purpose. 

Sir James Douglas wrote briefly to Governor Abernethy 
on December 7, 1847, informing him. of the massacre; and 
sending with his own letter that of McBean. He wrote 
again on December 9, to S. N. Castle, Esq., Sandwich 
Islands, an account for the outside world. The last letter 
is much fuller, and gives more extended information than 
was contained in the McBean letter. As we have before 
stated, it assigns the reason why the Indians murdered the 
missionaries, and repeats Rogers' statement, or what was 
reported as such. Here again the object is plainly to 
divert all suspicion from the priests and from the Hudson 
Bay Company. 

Where did Sir James Douglas get this additional infor- 
mation ? Undoubtedly from Brouillet. He could have 
procured it from no other source, and at no other time ; 
for the interval between his two letters was only two days. 
The conviction is therefore forced upon us that Brouillet 
prepared this account the night after the massacre, and 
before the dead were buried, for the purpose of diverting 
the suspicion which the public were sure to fasten upon 
the priests. 

Mr. Gray says that there have ''always been strenuous 
efforts to prevent open discussion of that transaction." 
Sif James Douglas, it appears, procured from McBean a 
summary of what had taken place, while Brouillet furnished 
him a more carefully prepared account, which reflected 
severely and unjustly upon Dr. Whitman and the other 
missionaries, and which was sent to Mr. Castle. The 



Frolojtged Co7itroversy over the Massacre. 149 

transaction, moreover, shows how great was the intimacy 
between Sir James and Brouillet, and the Romish priests 
and the agents of the Hudson Bay Company. It is by 
such methods as these that Douglas, Brouillet and Ross 
Browne furnish the public with a ''history of Protestant 
missions." 

Sir James Douglas, in his letter to Mr. Castle, refers to 
" the horrible suspicion " of the Indians that Dr. Whitman 
'• was giving poison to the sick, instead of wholesome medi- 
cine," and says that they selected three of their number 
"to test the effects of the medicine," and these dying 
under the treatment, they then " resolved to destroy the 
mission." Douglas depended on McBean and Brouillet 
for his information ; and the latter has improved on this 
in his own pamphlet, where he gives as one of the reasons 
for killing Dr. Whitman that he was a physician, and the 
Indians were accustomed to kill their medicine men when 
their patients died under their treatment, unless a large 
sum of money was paid to their friends. He would have 
the reader infer that the Indians looked upon Dr. Whit- 
man as one of their medicine men ; yet there is not a par- 
ticle of evidence, nor does Brouillet attempt to bring for- 
ward any, that the Indians regarded the Doctor in such a 
light. 

Equally unfounded are Douglas' assertions that the 
Indians '* were incensed against Dr. Whitman for not 
exerting his supposed supernatural power in saving their 
lives;" and that ''his former cruelty probably added 
strength to their suspicions" respecting the poison. The 
former assertion lacks all semblance of proof; and the 
latter could only be made by persons willing to defame 



150 The Story of Marcus Whit/nan. 

Dr. Whitman, since his entire life is a refutation of the 
accusation of cruelty, and all his acquaintances testify that 
his humanity and generosity to the poor and suffering were 
unbounded. 

If these writers had assigned the sickness and mortality 
which prevailed among the Indians as the reason of their 
hostility to the Americans, it would have been more 
plausible. It was a well-known fact that both measles and 
dysentery were introduced among them by the immigrants 
passing through their country ; and in view of their mode 
of treating their sick, it is not surprising that so many died 
of these diseases. Their usual method of treatment was 
either to sweat a patient and then have him plunge into 
the river, or to have the medicine men hold their hands in 
very cold water and then apply them to the patient. 
Besides this, the sick were exposed to chilling rains. 
These facts readily account for the fatality which attended 
an epidemic among them, v/ithout resorting to a cruel and 
unsupported charge of poisoning. 

That the fear caused by the occurrence of so many 
deaths may have had and most likely did have some influ- 
ence in precipitating the massacre, can be admitted with- 
out prejudice to the missionaries. At all events it afforded 
an opportunity to excite the suspicions of the Indians and 
inflame any existing hostility. This seems to have been 
the opinion of Brouillet, for he gives in his pamphlet de- 
tailed statements, from several sources, of the ravages of the 
imported diseases among the Cayuses. 

Justice, however, requires that we state what Mr. Brouil- 
let does not, that the measles and dysentery raged just as 
extensively and fatally among the Indians around Fort 



Prolonged Controversy over the Massacre. 151 

Colville as they did at Dr. Whitman's station; but at 
the Fort all was peace. Surely the facts justify Mrs. Vic- 
tor in her inference* that, " in spite of all and every provo- 
cation, perhaps the fatal tragedy might have been post- 
poned, had it not been for the evil influence of Joe Lewis " 
and others ''who incited the Indians to murder the Ameri- 
cans, by telling them that they were killing them all off in 
order that they might possess their horses and land." 

*P.403. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE AGENTS AND CAUSES OF THE MASSACRE. 

THE article in the Catholic World lays great stress 
upon the alleged fact that it was Dr. Whitman's 
Indians who massacred him — " near neighbors of the Doc- 
tor, the worst being a member of his own household." 
And Brouillet says : " They were all the Doctor's own 
people — the Cayuses." 

In contrast with this representation, we present the 
statement made by the Indians to Dr. William McKay, 
their interpreter and friend, who asked them why they 
*' murdered Dr. Whitman if they believed him a friend 
and his teachings true." 

*' You may well ask us," they replied ; " but we did not 
kill Dr. Whitman. The outsiders did it. Four chiefs 
believed their teachers, who often told them, ' Dr. Whit- 
man is a bad man ; if you follow him you will go to hell 
and be lost.' They conspired to kill him because of these 
teachings. They persuaded Te-lau-kait, the war chief [of 
the Cayuses], not to spare Dr. Whitman. He was there, 
but did not lift his hand to strike a blow or defend Dr. 
Whitman. He was hung, because he was with the mur- 
derers, and considered one of them. We, the other 
Indians, friends, were not there. We did not know what 
was going on. Wenapsnoot was twenty-five miles off. 

152 



The Agents and Causes of the Massacre. 153 

The murder was a surprise to us as it was to the Ameri- 



cans. 



To some persons the charge may seem to have consider- 
able significance. But those most familiar with the per- 
sons and events regard this as merely showing the perfec- 
tion and adroitness of the plan, which was that the killing 
should be done by the people whom Dr. Whitman had 
been laboring to benefit, and that thus the really guilty 
instigators of the crime might appear innocent. Mr. 
Gray's testimony is that the other missionaries were to be 
destroyed, and "that a part of the Indians at Mr. Spald- 
ing's and the Dalles were ready to engage in the same 
business as soon as they had their orders." This, it will 
be remembered, was the arrangement revealed by McBean's 
French interpreter to Mr. Hinman, and later to Mr. Ogden 
at Fort Vancouver. 

The fact that these Indians were formerly friendly, and 
that they were the " Doctor's own people and Protestants," 
did not keep them from having their minds poisoned by 
the infamous lies told them by the Catholic half-breeds 
and Canadian Frenchmen. 

Here, then, is the defense offered by Roman Catholic 
writers for the purpose of exculpating the priests from all 
responsibility in the massacre. As has been noticed, it 
consists mainly in seeking for, and assigning, reasons for 
the crime other than religious in their character. We 
have shown, as we think, that there is no valid proof of 
the missionaries' having said or done any of the things laid 
to their charge ; and that the accusations of bad faith about 
land, poisoning, etc., rest on testimony which would not 
be accepted in any proper court of justice. 



154 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

If this be so, then we are to look elsewhere for the causes 
which moved formerly friendly Indians to rise and murder 
their benefactors. The American settlers and the friends 
of the missionaries at the time charged with singular 
unanimity that the massacre was instigated by the Roman 
Catholic half-breeds and employes of the Hudson Bay 
Company — the former being prompted by religious zeal 
and bigotry which had been intensified by the presence 
and labors of the newly arrived priests, the latter by the 
fact that the missionaries civilized the Indians and encour- 
aged white immigration, thus diminishing the profits of 
the fur business. This led the Company to introduce 
priests into the country, and to favor them in every way 
possible, for the purpose of crippling if not destroying the 
influence of Protestant missionaries, and retarding settle- 
ment by Americans ; and while the priests and the Com- 
pany were aware of the hostility of some of the Indians, if 
not of a plot formed to break up the missions, they quietly 
awaited the consummation, without taking measures to 
prevent it. 

Much of the evidence relied on to sustain this view has 
already been adduced in the defense of the mission- 
aries from the unjust and injurious charges made against 
them by Roman Catholic writers. It is necessary, how- 
ever, to recall the same, and present it briefly and in 
order. Let us note : 

I. The exemption from all danger, harm, and death, of 
all Roman Catholics, and all the employes of the Hudson 
Bay Company. 

On this point we present the testimony of but two wit- 
nesses, Hon. Elwood Evans and Mr. Gray; and any onq 



The Agents and Causes of the Massacre. 155 

at all familiar with the history of Oregon need not be in- 
formed as to their exceptional advantages of information. 
Mr. Evans, in a letter to Rev. H. H. Spalding, Olympia, 
June 30, 1868, says : 

" How naturally the query arises, ' Why is the Catholic 
exempt from danger ; why can the Hudson Bay Company 
employes remain amid these scenes of blood and Indian 
vengeance against the white race, at peace, undisturbed, 
and, what is more loathsome, neutral in such a conflict ; 
why can the priest administer the rites of his church to 
those Indians who are making war against Christians — 
even flocking to him — when you and other missionaries are 
fleeing for your lives because you are a missionary and an 
American ? ' Think you the conviction will not follow 
that the uncivilized Indian was, at best, supposing that 
these bloody deeds were acceptable service to those whom 
he continued to regard as patrons and friends ? Let your 
narrative really illustrate that ' inasmuch as they did these 
things unto me ' because I was an American and a Prot- 
estant, that any and all Americans at that time would have 
suffered like consequences, then will follow the corollary — 
distilled truth, the logic of history — Catholics and Britons 
were exempt. The American missionaries were the apos- 
tles paving the way for American occupancy — the avant- 
couriers of Oregon-Americanization. The Hudson Bay 
Company — with its auxiliaries, the Catholic missionaries — 
were making their last grand struggle for the sole and un- 
limited control of the Indian mind. They supposed they 
were carrying out the wishes of their teachers. See Ogden's 
Speech to the Indians ^ where he boldly and openly owns 



156 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

that ' the Indians believed they would receive the appro- 
bation of the Company.* " 

Mr. Gray, in his History of Oregon, p. 485, comments 
as follows : 

"What shall we say of these depositions,* and the facts 
asserted under the solemnity of an oath, the witnesses still 
living, with many others confirming the one fact, that 
Roman priests and Hudson Bay men, English and French- 
men, were all safe and unharmed, while American citizens 
were cut down by savage hands without mercy. Without 
the aid of religious bigotry and the appeal to God as send- 
ing judgments upon them, not one of those simple-minded 
natives would ever have lifted a hand to shed the blood of 
their teachers or of American citizens." 

Brouillet claims that the priests were in danger, and 
were apprehensive of violence. But we have yet to learn 
that a single hair of their heads was touched. Their ex- 
emption, and that of the Hudson Bay Company's men, he 
asserts, was owing to the fact that they had never wronged 
the Indians by violating promises and taking their lands, 
as had the American missionaries. These charges having 
been proved untrue, it follows that the reasons given by 
Brouillet for the difference of treatment accorded Catholics 
and Protestants have no validity. 

II. The conduct of the half-breeds, Joe Lewis, Finlay, 
Stanfield and others, before and at the time of the mas- 
sacre. ' 

Lewis was most active in the murders, shooting down 
the victims, plundering the houses, and abusing helpless 

* Sworn statements of Elam Young and others as to the causes and cir- 
cumstances of the massacre. 



The Agents and Causes of the Massacre. 157 

girls. Finlay, besides counseling the savages, provided in 
his own house the chief rendezvous where their deviltry 
was concocted and matured. Brouillet, in his narrative of 
the murder, p. 89, offers what many persons will regard as 
an apology for the third villain, Stanfield, namely, that he 
shamed the Indians out of massacring the women and the 
children the day after the first murders had been com- 
mitted. This rests entirely on Stanfield's own story told to 
Mr. Ogden at Fort Walla Walla ; and Brouillet adds : 
*' An action of that nature, if it took place, would of itself 
be sufficient to redeem a great many faults." Yet this 
wretch knew that the massacre was to take place, but 
neither warned the whites of their danger, nor, so far as 
we have any reason to believe, did the least thing to prevent 
it. 

III. Fault has been found with the conduct of the Hud- 
son Bay Company both before and after the massacre. 

Says Elwood Evans'' History^ Chap, xix : 

'' The Hudson Bay Company professed neutrality. See 
Governor Ogden's speech to the Indians when he went to 
redeem the captives. See, too, what he says when he tells 
the Indians that they thought such acts would prove accept- 
able to the Company. The logic of the latter proves the 
outbreak to have been liable to follow the too literal appre- 
ciation of the education of the Indian mind as to their 
hatred of the Boston men ; and neutrality in such a case 
is but sympathy with the wrong-doer 

''The Company's servants could travel in the hostile 
country in perfect safety. Any Catholic could enjoy simi- 
lar immunity — dprioj'i the Indians were hostile, not to 
whites, but to American Protestants. 



158 The Story of Marcus Whitftian. 

"Again, there is no doubt that either the Hudson 
Bay Company or the Catholic missionaries could have pre- 
vented any outbreak of hostility on the part of the Indians. 
They failed to exercise such influence. They omitted to 
do a Christian, humane duty. Such an omission is as 
criminal, morally, as direct commission of acts inciting to 
hostility. 

'' History, therefore, .... will blame those who, pro- 
voking a storm, were not gifted with the power to control 
the elements, even had they the desire to do so. Nor will 
it excuse them because by a proffer of sympathy to stay 
the sacrifice of life they endeavored to relieve the captives. 
That Governor Ogden could relieve those captives, that the 
Roman clergy could stay in the midst of the hostile Indians, 
proves too much. The same influence, had it been prop- 
erly exerted, would have avoided the massacre." 

Mr. Gray says that Sir James Douglas often stated in his 
presence : " We " (the Hudson Bay Company) " must meet 
fire with fire .... sect with sect, settler with settler, as 
they had met, and were prepared to meet trader with 
trader." 

And Hon. S. R. Thurston, in his speech in the House 
of Representatives in 1850, said: 

** The earliest means possible were taken to wrest the 
whole country from us and our government. Dr. 
McLaughlin received orders, as the governor of this west- 
ern branch of this [Hudson Bay] Company, to dispatch 
agents to Fort Hall and order them to stop the American 
immigration, and, if possible, to prevent them from cross- 
ing the Blue Mountains." 

After more to the same purpose, he expresses his own 



The Agents and Causes of the Massac?'e. 159 

conviction in these words : '' That the massacre was insti- 
gated by the Hudson Bay Company, I no more doubt, than 
I doubt my own existence." 

This belief in the minds of many persons was greatly 
strengthened by the Company's unwillingness to aid in 
punishing the murderers. Indeed, Mr. Gray, in a pam- 
phlet published since his history, and which may be found 
in the Library of the Bureau of Education, uses the follow- 
ing language on this point : '^ One-half of our male Amer- 
ican population attempted to bring the murderers to pun- 
ishment, but failed through the interference, assistance and 
counsels of the Hudson Bay Company and priests." 

Mr. Canfield, a survivor of the massacre, takes a differ- 
ent view of the conduct of the Company. ''Messrs. 
Ogden and Douglas," he says, ''kept all knowledge of 
the massacre from the settlers in the Willamette Valley 
until they had concluded the purchase of the captives, for 
they knew that the Americans would come up to punish the 
Indians at once, and the latter, as soon as they heard they 
were coming, would kill the women and children who 
were their prisoners." 

IV. The efforts of the Roman Catholic priests and half- 
breeds to destroy the influence acquired over the Indians 
by the Protestant missionaries, and the countenance of 
these efforts by the Company, as a means of breaking down 
the power of Americans. 

In Mr. Swan's work, published in 1852, we read on page 

38.: 

"The officers of the Company also sympathized with 
their servants, and a deadly feeling of hatred has existed 
between these officers and the American immigrants, who 



i6o The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

came across the mountains to squat upon lands they consid- 
ered theirs ; and there is not a man among them who 
would not be glad to have had every American immigrant 
driven out of the country." 

Mr. Fitz Gerald, when opposing the extension of the 
charter of the Hudson Bay Company before the British 
Parliament in 1849, thus characterized its former principles 
and policy : 

"A corporation who, under authority of a charter which 
is invalid in law, hold a monopoly in commerce and exer- 
cise a despotism in government, and have so exercised that 
monopoly and so wielded that power as to shut up the 
earth from the knowledge of man and man from the 
knowledge of God." 

Mr. Hines, in his work on Oregon, p. 2>^(i, says of the 
Company : 

''They have always been opposed to its settlement by 
any people except such as by strict subjection to the Com- 
pany would become subservient to their wishes." 

As to the other branch of the charge, that the priests 
influenced the Indians against the Protestant missionaries, 
we have the testimony of Mr. Spalding and Dr. Whitman. 
In their annual report to the American Board for 1846, 
Mr. Spalding ascribes his trouble with the Indians during 
the previous two years to a white man and a Delaware 
Indian from east of the mountains, ''and to Romish 

priests, who are laboring in that quarter Their aim 

seems to be to counteract the influence of the missionaries, 
and, if practicable, cause them to be driven from the 
country." 

In the same report Dr. Whitman gives a summary of the 



The Agents and Causes of the Massacre. i6i 

labors of the missionaries in Oregon, and says: ''I look 
upon our location and labors here as having done enough 
for the cause of Christianity and civilization to compensate 
for all the toil and expense incurred, even without taking 
into account the good actually done to the Indians. A 
vast good has also been wrought among them." Of the 
disposition of the Indians, he says: "I am sure none of 
them wish to disturb or harm us ; and more, that we are 
held in high estimation by them. Last fall I gave them 
until spring to decide whether I shoukl leave them, as they 
had expressed some dissatisfaction. I was not long left in 
doubt, for they came forward at once and said they had no 
sympathy with the adherents of popery, whose ill-treatment 
had caused me thus to appeal to them." 

Miss Bewley made the following sworn statement in 
December, 1848, respecting the wash and purpose of these 
priests to obtain the Protestant mission stations : 

"When at the Umatilla, the Frenchmen [at the station 
with Father Blanchet] told me they were making arrange- 
ments to locate the priests — two at Mr. Spalding's as soon 
as Mr. Spalding got away, and two at the Dalles ; and they 
were going to the Doctor's next week to build a house." 

Mr. John Kimzey also testified, January, 1849, t^''^^ ^^^• 
McBean told him that the priests had offered to buy Dr. 
Whitman's station, but their offer had been declined; and 
that Dr. Whitman and Mr. Spalding would have to leave 
the country soon or the Indians would kill them ; adding : 
"We are determined to have Dr. Whitman's station." 
Confirmation of this is given by Mr. F. S. Wilcox, to 
whom the conversation was repeated the evening after leav- 
ing the Fort. 



1 62 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

Mr. Elam Young stated under oath in August, 1848, that 
when he was taken from the Doctor's saw-mill to the sta- 
tion one week after the massacre, for the ''first ten days 
we were constantly told that the Catholics were coming 
there to establish a mission." 

Mr. Daniel Young, who was at the saw-mill, some 
twenty miles distant, when the massacre took place, but 
who went to the station six days afterwards and conversed 
with Joe Stan field, said that Stanfield replied, in response 
to a question why he was saved unless he was a Catholic : 
"I pass for one." Mr. Young adds that Mr. Bewley told 
him in Stanfield's presence that he believed Joe Lewis was 
one of the leaders, and that the Catholic priests were the 
cause of the massacre ; to which Stanfield replied : "You 
need not believe any such thing, and you would better not 
let the Indians hear you say that." Soon afterward Bew- 
ley left the room, and Stanfield, turning to Mr. Young, said : 
*' He would better be careful how he talks. If the Indians 
get hold of it, the Catholics may hear of it." Mr. Young 
subsequently cautioned Mr. Bewley, but the latter was 
killed two days after this conversation, at the same time 
with Mr. Sale. 

Mr. William Geiger, Jr., in his statement respecting Dr. 
Whitman's trouble with the Indians and his consequent 
discouragements, gives as its cause ''the influence of the 
Roman priests, exercised in talking to the Indians, and 
through the French half-breed, Lehai, Tom Hill, a Dela- 
ware Indian, and others; " and he adds that the Indians 
told him that the Roman Catholics had instructed them, 
" that the Protestants were leading them in wrong roads, 
/. <?., even to hell. If they followed the Suapies (Ameri- 



The Agents and Causes of the Massacre. 163 

cans) they would continue to die. If they followed the 
Catholics, it would be otherwise with them ; only now and 
then one would die of age." 

Mr. Canfield, who was shot at the time of the massacre, 
but finally escaped, represents that McBean, who was in 
charge at Fort Walla Walla, was hostile toward the mis- 
sionaries at Waiilatpu, while with the Jesuits he was on the 
best of terms. And he is very sure that much had been 
done by the people at the fort and by the Jesuits to preju- 
dice the Indians against the Americans, and especially Dr. 
Whitman. 

Rev. Mr. Hines, in his book, speaks frequently of the 
methods used to inflame the minds of the superstitious 
Indians against the American missionaries, and to keep 
them from cultivating their lands and leading settled lives. 
They were told that it would be of no use — that the Amer- 
icans would soon come and kill them and destroy their lit- 
tle farms. 

Governor Abernethy and Commissary-General Palmer 
both testify that if Romanism had never come to Oregon 
the massacre of Dr. Whitman would not have occurred. 
And Mr. J. S. Griffin, who was the editor of the Oregon 
American at the time of the massacre, says: ''I am posi- 
tive in my testimony that an overwhelming majority of 
Americans held it as proved, that the Jesuit missionaries 
were the procuring cause of the Whitman massacre and the 
other Americans who fell with him."* 

To these facts and judgments we add the conclusions 
reached by several persons and bodies who, by reason 
either of their residence in Oregon at the time, or of their 

* Senate Ex. Doc. 37, p. 53. 



164 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

careful subsequent investigation, are entitled to have their 
opinions respected. The principal Protestant religious 
organizations of Oregon are on record on page 53 of the 
Senate document : 

'* The causes of the massacre were reducible to two, viz., 
the purpose of the English government or of the Hudson 
Bay Company to exclude American settlers from the coun- 
try, and the efforts of Catholic priests to prevent the intro- 
duction of education and of Protestantism by preventing 
the establishment of American settlements, and that the 
efforts which both parties made, operating on the ignorant 
and suspicious minds of the savages, led to the butchery in 
which twenty lives were destroyed, and the most dreadful 
sufferings and brutal injuries inflicted on the survivors. — 
Oregon Presbytery, Old School Presbyterian Church, June 
22, i86g. 

'* That the massacre was wholly unprovoked by Dr. Whit- 
man, or any member or members of the mission. 

"That the true cause of the massacre may be found in 
the course and policy pursued by the Hudson Bay Com- 
pany, which was an embodiment of the British govern- 
ment at that time in the country, to exclude American 
settlers from the land, and the efforts of the Roman priests 
directed against the establishment of Protestantism in the 
country, which they hoped to accomplish by preventing 
its settlement by American citizens. These two things, a 
knowledge of which was possessed by the savages, excited 
them, doubtless, to perpetrate the horrid butchery, and to 
inflict upon the survivors the most indescribable brutalities. 
— The Methodist Conference of Oregon, August, i86g. 

** That from what is regarded as evidence of the most 



The Agents and Causes of the Massacre. 165 

reliable character this Presbytery is fully convinced that 
the Roman clergy then occupying the country were the 
principal instigators of the Whitman tragedy. — Oregon 
Presbytery of Cumberland Presbytei'ian Churchy May, 
i86g. 

''Your committee believe, from evidence clear and suffi- 
cient to them, that these Roman priests did themselves 
instigate violence to the mission, resulting in the massacre, 
and that this document, so strangely published by Con- 
gress, with no rebutting statements accompanying it, was 
prepared by them to throw the blame of the massacre upon 
the American missionaries. — Congregational Association of 
Oregon^ June, i86g. 

" From personal knowledge and overwhelming testimony 
now before us, we, as a Presbytery, are convinced that 
Romanism and British influence were the main causes of 
the Whitman massacre, the wars that followed, and the 
persecuting and banishing from the country of the Protes- 
tant missionaries, destroying their property and imperiling 
their lives. — Oregon Presbytery of United Presbyterian 
Church, 1868 and i86g. ' ' 

The second citation will be from a pamphlet on Dr. 
Whitman and the settlement of Oregon, by Dr. F. F. 
Ellinwood, p. ii : 

'' How far the Indians were instigated to the massacre is 
a question which will probably never be settled. That 
some of the Hudson Bay Company's officers and all of the 
Jesuit missionaries did much to prejudice the Indians 
against Americans, and earnestly desired their removal 
from the country, is beyond doubt. But that they inten- 
tionally instigated the perpetration of the murder is not 



1 66 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

proven. Charity would suggest the theory that the result 
of their influence was more tragic than they had antici- 
pated." 

The third citation is from the History of Willamette 
Valley, by H. O. Long, wlio on. page 311 says : 

'' The Catholics cannot, however, escape a large measure 
of moral responsibility. They went among the Cayuses 
for the purpose of driving Whitman away and obtaining 
control of the tribe ; and to accomplish this they told the 
Indians that Dr. Whitman was a bad man and was telling 
them lies, and if they did as he said they would surely go 
to hell. Father Brouillet ought by that time to have 
become sufficiently acquainted with the Indian character 
to know that such assertions, if they were credited, were 
calculated to bring about just such a tragedy as was 
enacted. 

'' The massacre was the result of four distinct causes — 
the dislike of Americans, the ravages of the epidemic, the 
poison intrigue of Joe Lewis, and the priests' denunciation 
of Dr. Whitman, and where the responsibility of one rests 
is easily seen." 

Rev. Dr. William Barrows, writing to the New York 
Observer, attributes the massacre mainly to the policy and 
methods of the Hudson Bay Company, which "desired to 
hold back the wilderness, and use it only for the produc- 
tion of furs. It therefore kept out of it the civilized grains 
and grasses, the plow and hoe, and water-wheel. No 
Europeans were admitted excepting their own servants. 
All schools for the Indians were opposed, and almost all 
Christian missions, except the Roman Catholic." The 
policy of the Americans was directly the opposite of all 



The Agents and Causes of the Massacre. 167 

this. Their ''missions meant plows and highways and 
factories; ft meant less fur, and corn instead, and school- 
books." Of the English, as represented in the Company, 
he says that '' their jealousy of the Americans took a more 

active and violent form Diplomacy and trade, 

fraud and bloody violence, were used to keep them back." 

The reader will notice that this agrees with what we have 
said respecting the plans of the Company to exclude Ameri- 
cans and keep both country and natives in their primitive 
state. And so strongly is Dr. Barrows impressed with this 
mode of accounting for the uprising of the Indians and the 
final massacre of Dr., Whitman, that he is not disposed to 
look for other causes or hold other parties to any special 
responsibility. Accordingly he dismisses the subject of 
the supposed complicity of the Roman Catholics with the 
remark : 

"Studious and candid men, in careful survey of the 
facts, have gravely implicated the Jesuits, and some 
circumstantial evidence bears that way, and needs explain- 
ing The question has two sides, and each has a 

portly amount of evidence. A careful study of the Protes- 
tant side does not satisfy me that so very grave a charge 
should be laid on the Catholic mission of Oregon." 

We have no heart to pursue this matter further. It 
is no wish of ours to fasten such a crime as this upon the 
Romish priests, whose advent in the territory was the 
signal, at any rate, for strife and bloodshed. As stated 
before, our object has been to vindicate the characters and 
the work of the Protestant missionaries from the vile accu- 
sations which have been heaped upon them persistently by 
Roman Catholic writers. In doing this we have given the 



1 68 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

facts as nearly as they can now be ascertained from exist- 
ing public documents, from histories of the country, and 
from the testimony of persons who either had direct knowl- 
edge of what they narrate, or obtained it from those who 
lived in the State at the time and were acquainted with 
the actors and circumstances. And if the reader draws an 
inference unfavorable to any of the actors in these events, 
and especially to the conduct and teachings of the Romish 
priests, it will not be owing entirely to the evidence here 
produced as to their moral complicity in the cruel tragedy 
in Oregon, but largely to the fact that the Roman Catholic 
Church in all its past history, when it possessed the power, 
has ever been a persecuting church, and regarded its mis- 
sion to be either the conversion or the destruction of 
heretics — in other words, Protestants. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



SURVIVORS OF THE MASSACRE. 



IT was charged, at the time of the massacre, that some 
of the survivors were not treated with becoming hu- 
manity by the priests or by the agents of the Hudson Bay 
Company. 

It appears that Brouillet, after seeing the victims buried, 
departed the next day for his newly acquired station. 
Before leaving Waiilatpu, the scene of the murders, he is 
said to have promised the survivors that he would do all in 
his power to protect and assist them, but he did not keep 
his promise. He afterward assigned as the reason for not 
doing so, that he had incurred the enmity of the Indians 
by saving the life of Mr. Spalding, and had been detained 
a virtual prisoner for two or three weeks in Young Chief's 
camp. 

I can find no evidence confirmatory of this statement, 
but much to the contrary. Mr. Gray* says : 

" The women that lived through that terrible scene 
inform us that the priest was as familiar and friendly with 
the Indians as though nothing serious had occurred. We 
have seen and conversed freely with four of these unfortu- 
nate victims, and all affirm the same thing. Their impres- 
sion was", that there might be others he expected to be 

* Oregon, p. 491. 

169 



lyo The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

killed, and he did not wish to be present when it was done. 
According to the testimony in the case, Mr. Kimball and 
James Young were killed while he was at or near the 
station." 

Besides, this story of the enmity of the Indians to Brouil- 
let for sparing Spalding's life seems inconsistent with the 
claims made elsewhere by both Blanchet and Brouillet, 
that they were instrumental through their influence with 
the Indians, in saving the lives of others, and, with the aid 
of the Hudson Bay Company, of finally rescuing the sur- 
vivors from their captors. We are aware, as a matter of 
fact, that the priests were prominent in the council held 
for this purpose with the Indians ; we doubt not that their 
advice was in favor of the release of the women and chil- 
dren, and that it had great weight with the murderers. 
But while this shows their humanity after the massacre, and 
when the missionaries were no longer in their way, it shows 
also their influence over the Indians, and that the peril 
alleged could have had no better foundation than a very 
active imagination. In other words, such evidence proves 
too much, and leaves the reader to ask : If these priests 
and the Company had such great influence over these 
Indians, why did they not exert it before, and at least 
warn the missionaries and the Amerfcan settlers of their 
danger? 

Mrs. Victor pertinently inquires :* 

"By what means did the Catholic priests procure per- 
fect exemption from harm ? Was it that they were French, 
and that they came into the country only as missionaries 
of a religion adapted to the savage mind, and not as 

*i?tyer of the West, p. 419. 



Survivors of the Massacre. 171 

settlers ? Was it fear that restrained them from showing 
sympathy? Certain it is, that they preserved a neutral 
position, when to be neutral was to seem, if not to be, 
devoid of human sympathies." 

The claim is made for Brouillet that he was profoundly 
grieved and shocked at the sight of the victims, and as- 
sisted in the burial of the dead. No one will question that 
such were his feelings, or that he insisted on having the 
slain buried. And that, under such circumstances, this 
may have been very imperfectly done, we can readily 
believe. Respecting the manner of burial Mrs. Victor 
says :* 

"The friends and acquaintances of Dr. Whitman were 
shocked to find that the remains of the victims [of the 
massacre] were still unburied, although a little earth had 
been thrown over them. Meek, to whom ever since his 
meeting with her in the train of the fur trader, Mrs. Whit- 
man had seemed all that was noble and captivating, had 
the melancholy satisfaction of bestowing, with others, the 
last sad rite of burial upon such portions of her once fair 
person as murder and the wolves had not destroyed." 

Our sole purpose in referring to this matter is, that Mr. 
Spalding in one of his statements speaks of the graves as 
having been torn open by wild beasts, leaving the bodies 
exposed. For so doing, he is described by the writer in 
the Catholic World as going *' down to the grave at an old 
age with a load of falsehood and forgeries on his soul." 
A good cause and a valid defense is in no need of such 
vituperative language as this. 

The accusation that the priests and the agents of the 
*Iiiver of the West, p. 433. 



172 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

Hudson Bay Company did not exhibit proper and humane 
feeling toward the survivors of the massacre, rests upon 
four well-defined charges : 

I. That, although they knew of the threatened evils to 
the missionaries, and had almost unbounded influence over 
the Indians, the massacre was not only not prevented, but 
care was taken that the whites should not be warned of 
their peril. The evidence of this has been briefly pre- 
sented already and need not be repeated. 

II. That Mr. Hall, a mechanic, and a resident and 
employe at Dr. Whitman's station, was inhumanly 
treated. 

According to Mr. Spalding's account of the massacre, in 
the Senate document : 

*' Four Indians attacked Mr. Hall lying on the floor in 
the cook room ; the first gun missed fire, when Mr. Hall 
wrenched the gun from the Indian, and they ran, giving 
him time to reach the brush, where he lay till dark, and 
that night found his way to Fort Walla Walla, but was 
turned out, put over the Columbia River, and has never 
been heard from since. It is said he was immediately 
killed by the Indians. There were in the fort, besides the 
gentlemen in charge, some twenty white men, including 
some ten Catholic priests, who had arrived in the country 
about six weeks before, under the immediate superin- 
tendency of Bishop Blanchet and Vicar-General Brouillet, 
a part via Cape Horn and part by the overland route." 

Of Mr. Hall's treatment by the agent of the Hudson Bay 
Company after his escape from the Indians, and his seek- 
ing protection at Fort Walla Walla, Mr. Gray says : '' Mr. 
Hall was put across the Columbia River by McBean's 



Survivors of the Massacre. 173 

order, and was lost, starved to death, or murdered by the 
Indians, we know not which." 

We have another account of Mr. Hall's reception at the 
fort, on page 76 of Brouillet's pamphlet, where it is said 
that '' he was received in Mr. McBean's private or family 
room," and, being '' undecided whether to remain or pro- 
ceed to the Willamette," 125 miles distant, he consulted 
with Mr. McBean and concluded that he could reach that 
place in safety. Before setting out 'Mie was furnished 
with a cappo, blanket, powder, ball and tobacco, and Mr. 
McBean saw him safely across the river." 

What value is to be attached to this statement, as con- 
fronted with those which Messrs. Spalding and Gray have 
given, each reader must decide for himself. It seems 
strange that a wounded man should think of undertaking so 
long and perilous a journey, if he had received hospitable 
treatment at the fort, and felt secure there ; and it would 
have been much more to the advantage of McBean's repu- 
tation to detain him where he could be protected and 
kept in safety, instead of advising him to pursue such a 
wilderness journey. Mrs. Victor, writing of this same 
event, says : ** Mr. Hall was received into the fort coldly, 
and remained there twelve hours ; and hearing that all the 
captives were killed, owing to Mr. McBean's coldness 
proceeded on his way." 

III. The same inhuman treatment, though not leading 
to the same fatal result, is charged as having been shown to 
the Osborne family. 

We have an account of Mr. Osborne's escape from the 
Indians at the time of the murder, as given by himself on 
pages 31 and 32 of the Senate document, which we will 



174 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

abridge : "As the guns fired and the yells commenced, I 
leaned my head upon the bed and committed myself and 
family to my Maker. My wife removed the loose floor. I 
dropped under the floor and pulled it over us. In five 
minutes the room was full of Indians, but they did not dis- 
cover us." He then describes the " yells of the savages," 
and ''the groans of the dying;" and states that the 
family remained until dark in their place of concealment, 
when he, his children and his very feeble wife* "bent 
their steps toward Fort Walla Walla. The Indians were 
dancing a scalp-dance around a large fire at a distance. 
There seemed no hope for us, and we knew not which way 
to go. A dense, cold fog shut out every star, and the dark- 
ness was complete. We could see no trail, and not even 
the hand before the face." 

Mr. Osborne describes the sufferings of himself and 
family while lying concealed in the brush, without food 
and exposed to the cold and rain, from Monday until 
Thursday morning, when with one child he reached Fort 
Walla Walla, and begged Mr. McBean for horses, food and 
clothing to bring his family in. " Mr. McBean," he says, 
"told me I could not bring my family to his fort. Mr. 
Hall had come in on Monday night, but he could not have 
an American in his fort, and he had put him over the 
Columbia River ; that he could not let me have horses, or 
anything for my wife and children, and I must go to Uma- 
tilla. Insisted on bringing my family to the fort, but he 
refused ; said he would not let us in. I next begged the 
priests to show pity, as my wife and children must perish, 
and the Indians would undoubtedly kill me ; but with no 

* They had aU been sick with measles. 



^uHniwi's of the Mai sac re. i;^^ 

better success. I then begged to leave my child, who was 
now safe in the fort, but they refused." 

Providentially, Mr. Stanley, an artist, had just arrived 
at the fort. He offered his horses to Mr. Osborne, who, 
with an Indian guide furnished by the agent, started back 
for his family on Thursday night, with a supply of food and 
clothing. After a long and perilous search he found them 
alive, and by the skill and fidelity of the guide they were 
saved from the Indians who sought their destruction. 
They started for the Umatilla, as McBean had ordered ; 
but the guide, knowing their great danger from the lurking 
savages and Mrs. Osborne's feeble condition,* advised 
them to return to the fort. This they finally concluded to 
do. Reaching the fort late Sunday night — let us quote 
Mr. Osborne : 

''Ilaid my wife down and knocked at the gate. Mr. 
McBean came and asked who was there. I replied. He 
said he could not let us in ; we must go to Umatilla, or he 
would put us over the river, as he had Mr. Hall. My wife 
replied, that she would die at the gate, but she would not 
leave. He finally opened the gate and took us into a secret 
room, and sent an allowance of food for us every day. Next 
day I asked him for blankets for my sick wife to lie on. 
He had nothing. Next day I urged again. He had nothing 
to give, but would sell a blanket out of the store. I told 
him I had lost everything, and had nothing to pay, but if 
I should live to get to the Willamette, I would pay." 

Brouillet, as usual, attempts to excuse or extenuate the 
conduct of the priests on the ground of their own extreme 

* Mr. EeUs teUs us that she had to be tied to the Indian in order to be 
able to ride at aU. 



176 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

poverty, and of McBean on the plea that ** provisions 
were very scarce at the time in the fort." He says that 
McBean did finally let Mr. Osborne have '' a blanket on 
his credit," but passes over in silence his refusal to let the 
latter bring his family to the fort, and his ordering them 
to the Umatilla, where they were in imminent peril from 
lurking savages. 

In a review of this treatment of Osborne by the agent of 
the Hudson Bay Company, Rev. Mr. Eells, than whom 
there is nowhere to be found a more lenient and just critic, 
says: "Why this Roman Catholic man in charge of the 
fort should do this, is absolutely known only to himself, 
but the appearances from his acts are that he intended to 
help on the murders." 

And Mrs. Victor, in her River of the West, page 415, 
says of Mr. McBean : 

'"Whether it was from cowardice, or cruelty as some 
alleged, that Mr. McBean rejoiced in the slaughter of the 
Protestant missionaries, himself being a Catholic, can never 
be known. He refused shelter to Hall, a wounded man ; 
and also refused Mr. Osborne horses to bring his wife and 
children to the fort, and food, and forbade his return to 
Fort Walla Walla. ' It is certain that some base and 
cowardly motive made him exceedingly cruel to both Hall 
and Osborne.' When Stanley, the artist, offered his horses 
to bring in his sick wife and children, McBean became 
ashamed of his base and cruel conduct, and subsequently 
furnished Osborne a guide to the Umatilla." 

IV. The most serious charge, particularly as respects the 
conduct of the Romish priests, was their refusal to protect 
Miss Bewley from the criminal assaults of one of the Indian 



Survivors of the Massacre. 177 

chiefs. Ten days after the massacre she was removed to 
the station on the Umatilla River which the priests had 
taken possession of only a few days before the murder. 
There Five Crows demanded her for his wife. The priests 
are accused of having, through fear or for some other 
cause, advised her to accompany the Indian to his lodge at 
night and afterward refused to let her remain in their 
house. 

This" is so grave a charge that we need all the informa- 
tion that can be produced. Necessarily the testimony must 
be confined to the parties present — the accused and the 
victim. We quote Vicar- General Brouillet's account, as 
given in the Catholic f^r/r/ of February, 1872. 

'' 'We did,' says the reverend gentleman, 'all that 
charity could claim, and even more than prudence seemed 
to permit. We kept her for seventeen days in our house, 
provided for all her wants, and treated her well, and if she 
had minded us, and heeded our advice and entreaties, she 
would never have been subjected to that Indian. When 
she came first to our house, and told us that Five Crows 
had sent for her to be his wife, we asked her what she 
wanted to do. Did she want to go with him, or not ? She 
said she did not want to go with him. Stay with us, then, 
if you like; we will do for you what- we can, was our offer. 
When the evening came, the Indian chief called for her. 
The writer then requested his interpreter to tell him that 
she did not want to be his wife, and that, therefore, he did 
not want her to go with him. The interpreter, who was an 
Indian, allied by marriage to the Cayuses, and knew the 
chief's disposition well, would not provoke his anger, and 
refused to interpret. The writer, then making use of a few 



178 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

Indian words he had picked up during the few days he had 
been there, and with the aid of signs, spoke to the Indian 
himself, and succeeded in making him understand what he 
meant. The Indian rose furiously, and without uttering a 
word went away. The young woman then got frightened 
and wanted to go for fear he might come back and do us all 
an injury. The writer tried to quiet her, and insisted that 
she should remain at our house^ but to no avail ; she must 
go, and off she went. The Indian, still in his fit of anger, 
refused to receive her, and sent her back. She remained 
with us three or four days undisturbed ; until one evening, 
without any violence on the part of the Indian, or without 
advising with us, she went with him to his lodge. She 
came back the next morning, went off again in the evening, 
and continued so, without being forced by the Indian, and 
part of the time going by herself, until at last she was told 
to select between the Indian's lodge and our house, as such 
a loose way of acting could not be suffered any longer. 
That was the first and only time that she offered any resist- 
ance to the will of the Indian ; but, indeed, her resistance 
was very slight, if we can believe her own statement." 

As Miss Bewley's deposition is very extended, and covers 
other points besides the one under consideration, we will 
condense it, only giving in her own language what directly 
pertains to the priests' conduct. Those who wish to read 
the entire testimony are referred to the Senate document. 
The testimony was taken before a Justice of the Peace at 
Oregon City, December 12, 1848. 

Miss Bewley was, like other helpless women and girls, 
subjected to the brutalities of the murderers while she re- 
mained at Waiilatpu. After an interval of ten days, during 



Survivors of the Massacre. 179 

which she was repeatedly outraged by the Indians, she was 
taken to the Umatilla by an Indian who had been sent from 
that place for this purpose. To convey her, he brought 
with him a horse which Mr. Spalding had left in charge of 
Father Brouillet's interpreter when he made his escape. 
Though very sick from an attack of fever and ague, and so 
feeble that she had to be helped to mount the horse, Miss 
Bewley was obliged to accompany the Indian. The 
weather was extremely cold, and, without any shelter, she 
was compelled to pass the night with only a single blanket 
to protect her from the frozen earth. She reached Uma- 
tilla the morning after leaving Dr. Whitman's former sta- 
tion, and was met on her arrival by the Indian chief, who 
carried her, more dead than alive, into his lodge. He 
spread down robes and blankets and laid her upon them, 
and prepared food for her, which she was unable to eat. 
After her fever had passed off and she had rested, the chief 
told her she might go over to the white men's house, and 
that he would call for her at night. In the Bishop's house 
there were six white men — the Bishop, three priests and two 
Frenchmen. She states in her deposition that when she went 
there she '^begged and cried to the Bishop for protection, 
either at his house, or to be sent to Walla Walla. I told 
him I would do any work by night and day for him if he 
would protect me. He said he would do all he could. 
.... The first night the Five Crows came, I refused to 
go, and he went away, apparently mad, and the Bishop 
told me I would better go, as he might do us all an injury, 
and the Bishop sent an Indian with me. He took me to 
the Five Crows lodge. The Five Crows showed me the 
door, and told me I might go back, and take my clothes, 



I So The Story of Marcus WhiUnan. 

which I did Three nights after this, the Five Crows 

came for me again. The Bishop finally ordered me to go ; 
my answer was, I would rather die. After this, he still in- 
sisted on my going, as the best thing I could do. I was 
then in the Bishop's room ; the three priests were there. I 
found I could get no help, and had to go, as he told me, 
out of his room. The Five Crows seized me by the arm 
and jerked me away to his lodge." 

Miss Bewley adds that some days afterward, as Father 
Brouillet was about to start for Walla Walla, 'Mie called 
me out of the door and told me if I went to the lodge any 
more I must not come back to his house. I asked him 
what I should do. He said I must insist or beg of the 
Indian to let me stop at his house ; if he would not let me, 
then I must stop at his lodge." She then recounts a scene 
which took place that same night in the Bishop's house, 
when the Five Crows came and dragged her from her bed, 
to take her to his lodge, and adds : ''I told the French- 
man to go into the Bishop's room and ask him what I 
should do j he came out and told me that the Bishop said 
it was best for me to go. I told him the tali priest said, 
if I went I must not come back again to this house ; he said 
the priests dared not keep women about their house, but if 
the Five Crows sent me back again, why come. I still 
would not go. The Indian then pulled me away violently, 
without bonnet or shawl. Next morning I came back, and 
was in much anguish and cried much. The Bishop asked 
me if I was in much trouble. I told him I was. He said 
it was not my fault, that I could not help myself."* 

After more than a fortnight of this abuse. Miss Bewley, 

* Gray's Oregon, pp. 497-499. 



Survivors of the Massacre. i8i 

with the surviving captives, was redeemed, the ransom 
being furnished by the Hudson Bay Company. 

Rev. J. S. Griffin testifies to the correctness of the above 
statement, as having been made by Miss Bewley; and 
others have given depositions confirming it in many re- 
spects; but from the nature of the case there was no living 
person who could verify the most of her testimony. 

It is claimed, by those who would exculpate the priests, 
that Miss Bewley made a later statement, quoted in the 
Senate document, differing from this in giving more par^ 
ticulars of one or two of the scenes in the tragic history. 
This difference has been made the occasion of accusing 
Mr. Spalding of altering her statement to suit his own pur- 
poses. This charge will have little weight with those who 
knew Mr. Spalding, and were acquainted with his manner 
of life and his work. Its weakness is especially apparent in 
the light of the fact that such men as Governor Abernethy, 
Commissary-General Palmer, Indian Agent J. W. Ander- 
son, Chief Justice Hewet, Surveyor-General Garfielde, Sec^ 
retaries Evans and Smith, and hundreds of others, residents 
of Oregon, to say nothing of all the religious bodies in 
that country, as late as 1865, memorialized the governor 
of Idaho, to appoint Mr. Spalding Superintendent of In- 
struction, and testified to his great moral worth and his 
superior qualifications for the important duties of the office. 

We find the following in Mrs. Victor's River of the 
West, page 422 ; it shows her impression of the facts as 
they had come within her knowledge : 

" To this house (the Bishop's) Miss Bewley applied for 
protection, and was refused, whether from fear, or from 
the motives subsequently attributed to them by some Prot- 



1 82 Thr Story of Marcus Whitman. 

estant writers in Oregon, is not known to any but them- 
selves. The only thing certain about it is, that Miss 
Bewley was allowed to be violently dragged from their 
presence every night to return to them weeping in the 
morning, and to have her entreaties for their assistance 
answered by assurances from them that the wisest course 
for her was to submit. And this continued for more than 
two weeks, until the news of Mr. Ogden's arrival at Walla 
Walla became known, when Miss Bewley was told that if 
Five Crows would not allow her to remain at their house 
altogether, she must remain at the lodge of Five Crows 
without coming to their house at all, well knowing what 
Five Crows would do, but wishing to have Miss Bewley's 
action seem voluntary, from shame, perhaps, at their own 
cowardice." 

With this testimony from Mrs. Victor, we leave the 
matter to the candid verdict of our readers. As she is 
quoted by Roman Catholics to prove that it was Dr. Whit- 
man's imprudence, if not double-dealing, which excited 
the Indians and led to the final outbreak of hostilities, and 
that the Protestant missions had resulted in comparatively 
little benefit to the Cayuse and Nez Perce tribes, they can- 
not take exception to her value as a witness. To say the 
least, her opportunities of information on this topic were 
as good as on the others ; nor can she be accused of hos- 
tility to the priests or of partiality for the missionaries. 



1 



CHAPTER XIV. 

OREGON SAVED TO THE UNITED STATES. 

N closing this review it is desirable to present some addi- 
tional facts about Dr. Whitman's patriotic services in 
behalf of the settlement of Oregon by American citizens, 
and its ultimate control by our government. This is the 
more fitting since some late writers have not hesitated to 
deny that his visit to the East in 1842-43 ^'^^^ ^^'^Y such 
purpose in view, and to declare that his sole object was to 
induce the American Board not to discontinue its missions 
among the Indians on the Pacific Coast, or curtail the 
operations and expenditures of the missionaries, as it had 
been disposed to do owing to the failure of the missions to 
fulfill anticipations. 

• All questions on this head should forever be set at rest 
by the following explicit statement taken from the Mis- 
sionary Herald o{, Boston, the official organ of the Ameri- 
can Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. 

'' While it is apparent from the letters of Dr. Whitman at 
the Missionary House, that in visiting the Eastern States 
in 1842-43, he had certain missionary objects in view,* it 
is no less clear that he would not have come at that tnne, 
and probably would not have come at all, had it not been 
his desire to save the disputed territory to the United 

* One of these was a large increase of helpers, for which purpose Mr. Gray 
had been previously sent to the East. 

1B3 



184 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

States. It was not simply an American question, however; 
it was at the same time a Protestant question. He was 
fully. alive to the efforts which tlie Roman Catholics were 
mating to gain the mastery on the Pacific Coast, and he 
was firmly persuaded that they were working in the interest 
of the Hudson Bay Company, with a view to this very end. 
The danger from this quarter had made a profound im- 
pression upon his mind. Under date of April i, 1847, ^^^ 
wrote: 'In the autumn of 1842, I pointed out to our 
mission the arrangements of the Papal priests to settle in 
our vicinity, and that it only required that those arrange- 
ments should be completed to close our operations.' " 

Dr. William Geiger recalls many conversations with Dr. 
Whitman on the object of his going, and that ** his main 
object was to save the country to the United States, as he 
believed there was great danger of its falling into the hands 
of England. Incidentally he intended to obtain more 
missionary help." 

Testimony as direct and equally explicit is borne by Rev. 
Mr. Spalding, Rev. C. Eells, Hon. A. L. Ivovejoy, hi? 
companion on the winter journey, Mr. Perrin B. Whitman, 
his nephew, Hon. Alanson Hinman, and Samuel J. Parker, 
M.D., son of the pioneer missionary of the American 
Board's missions in Oregon. These all affirm in substance 
that the perilous trip was undertaken '' to prevent, if pos- 
sible, the trading off of this northwest coast to the British 
government," and, as a means to this end, *' the bring- 
ing of an immigration of American settlers across the 
plains." 

As further showing Dr. Whitman's relations to the 
American Board and the reasons for his journey, we for- 



Oregon Saved to the United States. 185 

tunately have a letter written by him to the Board, April i, 
1847, i^^ which he says : 

"American interests acquired in the country, which the 
success of the immigration of 1843 alone did and could 
have secured, have become the foundation of the late 
treaty between England and the United States in regard to 
Oregon ; for it may easily be seen what would have be- 
come of American interests in this country had the results 
of that immigration been as disastrous as have been the two 
attempts in 1845 ^"<i ^^4^ to alter the route then followed. 
Any one may see that American interests, as now acquired, 
have had more to do in securing the treaty than our original 
rights. From 1835 ^^ "^^ ^^ ^^^ \i^^\\ apparent that 
there was a choice of only two things : (i) The increase of 
British interests to the exclusion of all other rights in the 
country, or (2) the establishment of American interests by 
citizens on the ground. In the fall of 1842 I pointed out 
to our mission the arrangements of the Papists to settle 
here, which might oblige us to retire. This was urged as 
a reason why I should return home and try to bring out 
men to carry on the secular work of the missionary sta- 
tions, and others to settle in the country on the footing of 
citizens and not as missionaries. You will please receive 
this as an explanation of many of my measures and much 
of my policy." 

Mr. Gray, the secular agent of the mission, confirms the 
above statement. '* We can bear positive testimony," he 
.says, ''that Dr. Whitman did point out to his associates all 
the dangers to which they were exposed." 

An article in the Congregationalist, of Boston, by a writer 
familiar with this subject^ sums up the evidence by stating: 



1 86 The Story of Marcus Whitmaji. 

'' Dr. Whitman evidently regarded his visit to Washington, 
and his success in conducting 875 emigrants across the 
Rocky Mountains, as settling the destiny of Oregon." 

In the faceof all this evidence, nothing but an invincible 
prejudice will account for the refusal of some persons still 
to recognize the patriotic services rendered by Dr. Whit- 
man, and their denial even that he was in Washington dur- 
ing his visit to the East in the spring of 1843 ) though Rev. 
Drs. Barrows and Hale, of St. Louis; Judge James Otis, of 
Chicago, and Governor Ramsey, of Minnesota, all testify 
to having met and conversed with him respecting his inter- 
views with Daniel Webster, the President, and the Cabinet, 
Hubert H. Bancroft, in his history of Oregon, entirely 
ignores Dr. Whitman's visit to Washington and his services 
there in behalf of Oregon. 

Happily for the truth of history and the vindication of a 
great and good man, evidence has come to light that abso- 
lutely settles the fact of Dr. Whitman's presence in Wash- 
ington, and of his repeated interviews with the heads of the 
government respecting the Northwest Territory. Among 
the documents in the War Department there are two, dis- 
covered recently, written by Dr. Whitman, and addressed 
to Hon. James M. Porter, Secretary of War in 1843 under 
President Tyler. The one is a bill prepared by him, and 
which he proposed Congress should pass, ''to promote safe 
intercourse with the territory of Oregon; to suppress vio- 
lent acts of aggression on the part of certain Indian tribes ; 
the better to protect the revenue ; and for the transporta- 
tion of the mail, and other purposes." The act provides 
for establishing agricultural posts or farming stations from 
the Kansas River to the settlements of the Willamette in 



Oregon Saved to the United States, 187 

Oregon ; that at each of these there shall reside a superin- 
tendent and a deputy superintendent, '^having charge and 
power to carry into effect the provisions of this act, subject 
to the instructions of the President;" and that there shall 
also be laborers and artificers, not exceeding twenty, whose 
appointment and dismissal shall rest with the superin- 
tendent. 

It further provides for suitable buildings, supplied with 
necessary mechanical and agricultural implements; ''that 
at each post, not to exceed 640 acres of land be cultivated 
with products there required ; that the superintendents 
shall be appointed by the President, and hold office four 
years, who are to make an annual statement to the Secre- 
tary of the Treasury of all receipts and disbursements. 
They shall have charge of the Indians under the control of 
the Commissioner-General of Indian Affairs ; have power 
to administer oaths and to act as civil magistrates, with 
authority to arrest all disorderly white persons, and to 
punish Indians committing acts against the laws of the 
United States ; and finally to act as postmasters at their 
stations, but without compensation." 

In explanation and advocacy of this bill, prepared and 
sent to the Secretary of War, Dr. Whitman accompanied 
it with a letter of more than ten pages, closely written. 
The letter is of such importance in vindicating the truth of 
history, that we print it as an appendix to this volume. 

These documents forever settle the dispute respecting 
Dr. Whitman's presence in Washington in the spring of 
1843, ^^ importance of the information he conveyed, and 
the plan which he submitted to the Cabinet of President 
Tyler for the maintenance of our Oregon possessions. His 



1 88 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

information was needed and was welcomed, and his plan to 
save Oregon was adopted. 

In the New York Indepeiide7it oi January, 1870, we are 
told that " A personal friend of Mr; Webster (then Secre- 
tary of State), a legal gentleman, and with whom he con- 
versed on the subject, several times remarked, ' It is safe 
to assert that our country owes it to Dr. Whitman and his 
associate missionaries that all of the territory west of the 
Rocky Mountains, and south as far as the Columbia River, 
is not owned by England and held by the Hudson Bay 
Company.' " 

And Dr. Barrows, in his History of Oregon and the 
Struggle for Possession, says sententiously and truly that 
"American enterprise, pioneered by American missiona- 
ries, secured Oregon to the United States." 

So far as known, Dr. Whitman's bill did not get before 
Congress. Probably before this could be done Mr. Porter 
ceased to be Secretary of War, as the Senate failed to con- 
firm his nomination. 

In presenting the timely and valuable services of Dr. 
Whitman to his country at this period when the possession 
of Oregon was to be decided, I avail myself of the clear 
and candid statement of the condition of the territory, by 
Rev. Dr. S. H. Willey,* of San Francisco, Cal., in the 
Pacific of September 2, 1885. There could hardly be 
found on the Pacific Coast a person better informed than 
he, or one whose representation would carry a stronger or 
more general conviction of the truth to all unprejudiced 
minds. 

The article first deals with the difficulties which the 

* An honored minister and early resident on the Pacific Coast, 



Oregon Saved to the United States. 189 

Protestant missionaries encountered, owing to the intrusion 
of Papal priests upon their field of labor, with the approval 
and aid of the Hudson Bay Company, when at once *' the 
most persistent exertions were used, both secret and open, 
to turn away the natives from the instruction" of their 
former Protestant mission teachers, leading to anxiety and 
discouragement lest the hard work of four years should be 
interrupted, if not wholly destroyed. This was followed 
in the early part of 1842 by a revival among the Indians of 
their interest in the Protestant missions, leading the mis- 
sionaries to prosecute their labors with increased vigor, and 
with correspondingly gratifying and beneficial results. 

The article proceeds then to speak more specifically of Dr. 
Whitman and his services for Oregon : 

'•'As the autumn of 1842 came on, a new subject of 
anxiety presented itself. Immigrants arrived from across 
the Rocky Mountains, bringing the news that the long- 
pending * Oregon question ' was coming to a settlement. 
The critical issue was on the eve of decision — which flag 
was to wave over this great Northwest, that of Great Britain 
or that of the United States. It was not, in fact, so near to a 
decision as the news at this time indicated : but it stirred up 
the anxiety of what few inhabitants there were in Oregon, on 
both sides, to fever heat. From all that could be learned, it 
was believed by our missionaries that the decision was 
coming on without the real facts being known as to the 
vast value of the country. Dr. Whitman, especially, felt 
this keenly. From four or five years' observation he had 
become profoundly convinced of its immense value for 
homes for a great people, rather than as the hunting-ground 
for a foreign fur- trading monopoly. He knew what exer- 



390 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

tions the Hudson Bay Company were making to retain the 
territory, and what vigor they inspired in the British 
government to insist on its right to it. And he did not 
think that our own United States government was fully 
informed of the value of the country they were negotiating 
about. And it would seem, in reading their speeches in the 
light of to-day, that our public men, even at a later day, 
knew very little indeed of it." 

In support of this view, the writer quotes from the 
speeches of Senators Dayton, of New Jersey, and McDuffie, 
of South Carolina, and from the opinion of Mr. Webster, 
as recorded in his works, Vol. i, p. 149, and Vol. v, p. 
102. As these have been referred to elsewhere in this 
volume, they do not require to be here quoted. 

" Is it strange, then," the writer asks, '' that Dr. Whit- 
man was stirred by an immense anxiety when he under- 
stood, from news just received,* that the ownership of all 
Oregon was on the eve of being decided — decided, too, in 
such utter ignorance, on the part of our statesmen, of its 
real value? The rightfulness of the claim of the United 
States to the country was admitted and believed in by all 
parties, as the opposite was believed in by the British ; but 
its worth seemed to be held in such low esteem that there 
appeared to be almost a willingness to abandon it. Dr. 
Whitman, on the contrary, had lived in Oregon several 
years. He had tested its soil. He had observed its 
climate. He had traveled in it many thousand miles. He 
knew that it was capableof sustaining a great population. He 
knew, too, as very few other men did know, that wagon- 
trains with men, women and children could come all the 
* Brought by immigration party, faU of 1842. 



Oregon Saved to the United States. 



191 



way from the East across the Rocky Mountains to this pro- 
ductive and genial country. He knew that the comj^eting 
claims of Great Britain and the United States were so 
evenly balanced that the fact of the actual settlement of the 
country by either party would mainly determine the owner- 
ship. He saw the beginning of a competing settlement in 
the Red River emigration from the British Northeast, some 
hundred or two persons, and he observed the exultation 
with which their coming was greeted. To his mind the 
moment was critical. Whatever was done to determine 
the future must be done instantly. Two keys must be 
touched — one the key of diplomacy, as against bartering 
the Oregon claim for any equivalent ; the other the key of 
actual occupation, planting American homes in abundance 
on the rich lands in Oregon, while yet the country was 
open to joint occupation. But if he would touch these 
keys, he must do it at the East. No wires then connected 
this coast with Washington, or the great West from which 
immigration could be looked for. How could he reach 
the East ? It is now October. The news just received leads 
him to think that whatever information shall avail anything 
at Washington must reach the government immediately ; 
and whatever is done to stimulate the next year's emigra- 
tion must be done before spring. How could he get there ? 
The journey was hard enough in the best season of the year 
and in the protecting company of a caravan. How power- 
ful the motive that could nerve a man, who knew so well 
the perils of mountain travel, to undertake such a journey 
alone, and in the winter ? But such a motive the Oregon 
situation applied to Dr. Whitman's mind. Against the 
remonstrance of his friends and associates, he determines 



192 The Story of Marcus Whitman. 

to attempt the journey. One attendant alone accompanies 
him ; it is A. L. Lovejoy, who had just arrived overland 
with the small immigration of 1842, and brought the in- 
formation concerning Oregon matters at the East that so 
stirred Dr. Whitman. On October 3, 1842, they mount, 
and are off for an attempt to reach the Eastern States be- 
fore spring. 

"Through storms and snows, in spite of hunger and 
fatigue, they made their lonely way through regions trav- 
ersed only by savages and wild beasts, climbing mountains 
and swimming rivers, from the ice-bound border of the 
swift current on the one side to the ice-bound border on 
the other side. By a circuitous southern route they at tast 
reached St. Louis late in the month of February, 1843. 
Hastening on to Washington, Dr. Whitman did what he 
could for Oregon with the government, and then made his 
way to Boston and arranged the affairs of the mission with 
the American Board, and was back in the West in season 
to join the great decisive emigration of the yeai 1843, 
that really settled the 'Oregon question.' This emigra- 
tion consisted of nearly a thousand persons. Dr. Whit- 
man did all that he possibly could, by speech and pen, 
during the short time he was East, to stimulate the 
emigration and awaken an interest in Oregon. And, 
although he found that the actual settlement of the 
boundary line between England and the United States 
was not as near as he had been led to suppose, the 
preliminary step toward it was soon taken, by the year's 
notice given in 1844 of the termination of the * joint occu- 
pation.' " 

Of Dr. Whitman's services to the cause while at Wash- 



Oregon Saved to the United States. 193 

ington, we append only two or three brief additional 
statements. Says Hon. Elwood Evans : 

*' There is no doubt that the arrival of Dr. Whitman was 
opportune. The President was satisfied that the territory 
was worth the effort to save it. The delay incident to the 
transfer of negotiations to London was fortunate." 

In an article printed in the New York Observer in 1883, 
Dr. Barrows, the author of the history of Oregon in the 
American Commonwealth series, says : 

*'The Doctor had arrived in Washington just in time to 
make such a visit of the greatest service in weakening the 
English and strengthening the American claims. His in- 
formation supplemented that of the President, Secretary, 
and Congress generally ; and it rectified the wrong impres- 
sions and unjust bias which English statements had made, 
and it exposed the bold scheme of the Hudson Bay Com- 
pany to capture the territory by stealthy colonization ; and 
to him above any other man, and beyond comparison, must 
be given the credit of saving Oregon." 

Mr. H. O. Lang, the author of a valuable history of the 
Willamette Valley, page 266, thus writes : 

'* No one can have read the preceding pages without 
having become convinced of the sterling integrity, firmness 
of purpose, and energy of action of Doctor Whitman. 
His character and services to the American cause entitle 
him to the first place among those whose memory the citi- 
zens of Oregon should ever revere, and whom all true 
Americans should honor. It has settled beyond dispute, in 
the minds of those who have given the subject a just and 
careful consideration, the permanent and exalted position 



194 The Story of Maj'cus Whitman. 

Doctor Whitman must ever occupy in the annals of 
Oregon." 

In The Advance of March 14, 1895, is this tribute : 

'' Is there in history the record of a man who by himself 
saved for his country so vast and so valuable a territory as 
did Whitman by his prophetic heroism of 1842-43? .... 
His ride across the continent in the winter of 1842, a 
winter memorable for its severity, is without a parallel in 
history. It stands as the sublime achievement of a prophet 
and a hero, who saw and suffered that his country might 
gain. The United States paid ^10,000,000 for Alaska. 
It bought Louisiana for millions more. It paid a Mexican 
War, blood and money, for the acquisition of Texas and 
New Mexico. But what did it pay for Washington and 
Oregon and Idaho, a territory into which New England 
and the Middle States might be put, with Maryland, Vir- 
ginia, West Virginia and three Connecticuts? It paid not 
one cent. That vast region cost the Nation nothing. It 
cost it only the sufferings and perils of Marcus Whitman, 
who risked his life and endured all hardships that the ter- 
ritory of his adoption might belong to the country of his 
birth." 

Again, in the same number of that paper, we find the 
following : 

" Marcus Whitman was one of the splendid heroes and 

benefactors of the Republic What he did for 

the Nation, through his clear insight into the motives and 
aims of men, whose loyalty was to another flag than the stars 
and stripes, and by his prompt action, brave sacrifices 
and unfaltering determination, in saving an imperial and 
priceless section of our domain to be a part of the United 



07'egon Saved to the United States. 195 

States, had he been a soldier or a politician, would have 
made his name a household word from end to end of our 
vast Commonwealth." 

We close this volume, itself a labor of love, by a brief 
and touching tribute from the pen of Rev. H. K. Hines, 
of Fort Vancouver, in the present State of Washington, 
who was personally acquainted with Dr. Whitman and 
fully aware of his comprehensive views, and of his devotion 
to the cause of Christian missions : 

'' On the banks of the Walla Walla, in a lowly grave, 
unmarked by an inscription, the mortal remains of Dr. 
and Mrs. Whitman a.re slumbering away the years. They 
sleep not far from the spot where the consecrated years of 
their mature life were so lavishly given to that noblest of 
all work, raising the fallen and saving the lost. Living, 
they were the peers of such a hero and heroine as Dr. 
and Mrs. Judson ; and dying, their memory is entitled 
to the same enshrinement in the grateful regards of a 
church and state, indebted to them for one of the finest 
illustrations of unselfish patriotism and of the purity and 
power of ancient faith. And when he whom they served 
with such special devotion shall assemble his best beloved, 
they of the eastern shall greet those of the western shore of 
the Pacific, and hail them fellow-heirs to martyr's robe and 
crown.'* 



APPENDIX. 



To THE Hon. James M. Porter, Secretary of War : 

Sir : In compliance with the request you did me the 
honor to make last winter while at Washington, I herewith 
transmit you the synopsis of a bill which, if it could be 
adopted, would, according to my experience and observa- 
tion, prove highly conducive to the best interests of the 
United States generally, to Oregon, where I have resided 
for more than seven years as a missionary, and to the 
Indian tribes that inhabit the intermediate country. 

The Government will doubtless now for the first time be 
apprised through you, and by means of this communica- 
tion, of the immense migration of families to Oregon 
which has taken place this year. I have since our inter- 
view been instrumental in piloting across the route de- 
scribed in the accompanying bill, and which is the only 
eligible wagon road, families consisting of no less than one 
thousand persons of both sexes, with their wagons, amount- 
ing in all to more than one hundred and twenty, 698 oxen 
and 173 loose cattle. The emigrants are from different 
States, but principally from Missouri, Arkansas, Illinois 
and New York. The majority of them are farmers, lured 
by the prospects of government bounty in lands, by the 
reported fertility of the soil, and by the desire to be first 
among those who are planting our institutions on the 

197 



198 Appendix. 

Pacific Coast. Among them also are artisans of every 
trade, comprising with farmers the very best material for a 
new colony. As pioneers these people have midergone in- 
credible hardships, and, having now safely passed the Blue 
Mountain range with their wagons and effects, have estab- 
lished a durable road from Missouri to Oregon, which will 
serve to mark permanently the route for large numbers each 
succeeding year, while they have practically demonstrated 
that wagons drawn by horses or oxen can cross the Rocky 
Mountains to the Columbia River, contrary to all the 
sinister assertions of those who pretended it to be impos- 
sible. 

In their slow progress these persons have encountered, as 
in all former instances, and as all succeeding emigrants 
must, if this or some similar bill be not passed by Con- 
gress, the continued fear of Indian aggression, the actual 
loss through them of horses, cattle and other property, and 
the great labor of transporting an adequate amount of pro- 
visions for so long a journey. The bill herewith proposed 
would in a great measure lessen these inconveniences by 
the establishment of posts, which, while they possessed 
power to keep the Indians in check, thus doing away [with] 
the necessity of constant military vigilance on the part of 
the traveler by day and night, would be able to furnish 
them [emigrants] in transit with fresh supplies of pro- 
visions, diminish the original burdens of the emigrants, and 
finding thus a ready and profitable market for their pro- 
duce, a market that would in my opinion more than suffice 
to defray all the current expenses of such posts. The 
present party are supposed to have expended no less than 
two thousand dollars at Laramie and Bridger Forts, and as 



Appendix. 199 

much more at Fort Hall and at Fort Boise, two of the 
Hudson Bay Company's stations. These are at present the 
only stopping places in a journey of twenty-two hundred 
miles, and the only places where additional supplies can 
be obtained even at the enormous rates of charge called 
mountain prices — fifty dollars the hundred for flour and 
fifty dollars the hundred for coffee, the same for sugar and 
powder, etc. 

There were many cases of sickness and some deaths 
among those who accomplished the journey this season, 
owing in a great measure to the uninterrupted use of meat, 
salt and fresh, with flour, which constitute the chief 
articles of food they are able to convey in their wagons, 
and this would be obviated by the vegetable productions 
which the posts in contemplation could very profitably 
afford them. Those who rely upon hunting as an auxiliary 
support are at present unable to have their arms repaired 
when out of order ; horses and oxen become tender-footed 
and require to be shod on their long journey, sometimes re- 
peatedly, and the wagons must be repaired in a variety of 
ways. I mention these as valuable incidents to the pro- 
posed measure, as it will also be found to tend in many 
other incidental ways to benefit the migratory population 
of the United States choosing to take this direction, and 
on these accounts, as well as for the immediate use of the 
posts themselves, they ought to be provided with the ne- 
cessary shops and mechanics, which would at the same 
time exhibit the several branches of civilized art to the 
Indians. 

The outlay in the first instance need be but trifling. 
Forts like those of the Hudson Bay Company, surrounded 



200 Appendix. 

by walls enclosing all the buildings, and constructed almost 
entirely of adobe or sun-dried bricks with stone founda- 
tions only, can be easily and cheaply erected. There are 
very eligible places for as many of these as the Government 
will find necessary, at suitable distances, not further than 
one or two hundred miles apart, at the main crossings of the 
principal streams which now form impediments to the jour- 
ney, and consequently well supplied with water, having 
alluvial bottom lands of a rich quality and generally well 
wooded. If I might be allowed to suggest the best sites 
for said posts, my personal knowledge and observation 
enable me to recommend : First, the main crossing of the 
Kansas River, where a ferry would be very convenient to 
the traveler and profitable to the station having it in charge ; 
next, and about eighty miles distant, the crossing of Blue 
River, where in times of an unusual freshet a ferry would 
be in like manner useful ; next, and distant from one hun- 
dred to one hundred and fifty miles from the last men- 
tioned, the Little Blue or Republican fork of the Kansas ; 
next, and from sixty to one hundred miles distant from the 
last mentioned, the point of intersection of the Platte 
River; next, and from one hundred to one hundred and 
fifty miles distant from this, last mentioned, the crossing 
of the South Fork of Platte River ; next, and about one 
hundred and eighty or two hundred miles distant (from the 
last mentioned). Horse Shoe Creek, which is about forty 
miles west of Laramie's Fork in the Black Hills. There is 
a fine creek for mills and irrigation, good land for cultiva- 
tion, fine pasturage and timber and stone for building. 
Other locations may be had along the Platte and Sweet- 
water, on the Green River, or Black or Hain's Fork on the 



Appendix. 201 

Bear River near the great Soda Springs ; near Fort Hall, and 
at suitable places down to the Columbia. These localities 
are all of the best description, and so situated as to hold a 
ready intercourse with the Indians in their passage to and 
from the ordinary Buffalo hunting grounds ; and in them- 
selves so well situated in all other respects as to be desirable 
to private enterprise if the usual advantages of trade existed. 
Any of the farms above indicated would be deemed ex- 
tremely valuable in the States. 

The Government cannot long overlook the importance 
of superintending the savages who endanger this line of 
travel, and who are not yet in treaty with it. Some of these 
are already well-known to be led by desperate white men 
and mongrels, who form banditti in the most difficult 
passes, and at all times are ready to cut off some lagging 
emigrant in the rear of the party, or some adventurous one 
who may proceed a few miles in advance, or at night to 
make a descent upon the sleeping camp and carry away or 
kill horses and cattle. This is the case even now in the 
commencement of our western emigration, and when it 
comes to be more generally known that large quantities of 
valuable property and considerable sums of money are 
yearly carried over this desolate region, it is to be feared 
an organized banditti will be instituted. The posts in 
contemplation would effectually counteract this; for that 
purpose they need not, nor ought not to be military estab- 
lishments. The trading posts in this country have never 
been of such a character, and yet with a very few men in 
them have for years kept the surrounding Indians in the most 
pacific disposition, so that the traveler feels secure from 
molestation upon approaching Fort Laramie, Bridger's 



202 Appendix. 

Fort, Fort Hall, etc. The same can be obtained without 
any considerable expenditure by the Government, while, 
by investing the officers in charge with competent au- 
thority, all evil-disposed white men, refugees from justice, 
or discharged vagabonds from the trading posts, might be 
easily removed from among the Indians and sent to the 
appropriate states for trial. The Hudson Bay Company's 
system of rewards among the savages would soon enable 
the posts to root out these desperadoes. A direct and 
friendly intercourse with all the tribes, even to the Pacific, 
might be thus maintained, the government would become 
more intimately acquainted with them, and they with the 
government ; and, instead of sending to the state courts 
a manifestly guilty Indian to be arraigned before a distant 
tribunal, and acquitted for the want of testimony by the 
technicalities of lawyers and of laws unknown to them, and 
sent back into the wilderness loaded with presents as an in- 
ducement to further crime, the posts should be enabled to 
execute summary justice as if the criminal had been already 
condemned by his tribe, because the tribe will be sure to 
deliver up none but the party whom they know to be 
guilty. They will in that way receive the trial of their 
peers and secure within themselves, to all intents and pur- 
poses, if not technically the trial by jury, yet the spirit of 
that trial. There are many powers which ought to reside 
in some person on this extended route for the convenience 
and even necessity of the public. 

In this the immigrants and the people of Oregon are no 
more interested than the resident inhabitants of the states. 
At present no person is authorized to administer an oath or 
legally attest a fact from the western line of Missouri to 



Appendix, 203 

the Pacific. The immigrant cannot dispose of his property 
at home, although an opportunity ever so advantageous to 
him should occur, after he passes the western border of 
Missouri. No one can here make legal demand and pro- 
test of a promissory note or bill of exchange. No one can 
secure the valuable testimony of a mountaineer, or of our 
emigrating whites after he has entered this at present law- 
less country. Causes do exist and will continually arise in 
which the private rights of citizens are and will be seriously 
prejudiced by such an utter absence of legal authority. A 
contraband trade from Mexico, the introduction from that 
country of liquors to be sold among the Indians west of the 
Kansas River, is already carried on with the mountain 
trappers, and very soon the teas, silks, nankins, spices, 
camphor and opium of the East Indies will find their way, 
duty free, through Oregon, across the mountains and into 
the States, unless custom house officers along this line find 
an interest in intercepting them. 

Your familiarity with the government policy, duties and 
interest, renders it unnecessary for me to more than hint 
at the several objects intended by the enclosed bill, and 
enlargement upon the topics here suggested as inducements 
to its adoption would be quite superfluous, if not imperti- 
nent. The very existence of such a system as the one 
above recommended, suggests the utility of post-office and 
mail arrangements, which it is the wish of all who now live 
in Oregon to have granted to them, and I need only add 
that contracts for this purpose will be readily taken at rea- 
sonable rates for transporting the mail across from Missouri 
to the mouth of the Columbia in forty days, with fresh 
horses at each of the contemplated posts. The ruling 



204 Appendix. 

policy proposed regards the Indians as the police of the 
country, who are to be relied upon to keep the peace not 
only for themselves, but to expel lawless white men and 
prevent banditti, under the salutary guidance of the super- 
intendents of the several posts, aided by a well-directed 
system of bounty, to induce the punishment of crime. It 
will be only after a failure of these means to procure the 
delivery or punishment of violent, lawless and savage acts 
of aggression, that a band or tribe should be regarded as 
conspirators against the peace, and punished accordingly 
by force of arms. 

Hoping that these suggestions may meet your approba- 
tion, and conduce to the future interest of our growing 
colony, I have the honor to be, Honorable Sir, 

Your obedient servant, 

Marcus Whitman. 



WHITMAN'S RIDE. 



BY ALICE WELLINGTON ROLLINS. 



(^After " Paul Revere:'^ 



Listen, my children, and you shall hear 

Of a hero's ride that saved a State. 

A midnight ride ? Nay, child, for a year 

He rode with the message that could not wait. 

Eighteen hundred and forty-two ; 

No railroad then had gone crashing through 

To the Western coast; not a telegraph wire 

Had guided there the electric fire ; 

But a fire burned in one strong man's breast 

For a beacon-light. You shall hear the rest. 

He said to his wife : " At the fort to-day, 
At Walla Walla, I heard them say 
That a hundred British men had crossed 
The mountains; and one young, ardent priest 
Shouted, < Hurrah for Oregon ! 
The Yankees are late by a year at least !' 
They must know this at once at Washington. 
Another year and all would be lost. 
Some one must ride, to give the alarm, 
Across the continent; untold harm 
In an hour's delay ; and only I 
Can make them understand how or why 
The United States must keep Oregon!" 
205 



2o6 Appendix. 

Twenty-four hours he stopped to think. 
To think ? Nay, then, if he thought at all, 
He thought as he tightened his saddle-girth, 
One tried companion, who would not shrink 
From the worst to come; just a mule or two 
To carry arms and supplies, would do, 
With a guide as far as Fort Bent. And she, 
The woman of proud heroic worth, 
Who must part from him, if she wept at all, 
Wept as she gathered whatever lie 
Might need for the outfit onhis way. 
Fame for the man who rode that day 
Into the wilds at his country's call : 
And for her who waited for him a year 
On that wild Pacific coast, a tear ! 



Then he said " Good-bye !" and with firm-set lips 

Silently rode from his cabin door. 

Just as the sun rose over the tips 

Of the phantom mountains that loomed before 

The woman there in the cabin door. 

With a dread at her heart'she had not known 

When she, with him, had dared to cross 

The Great Divide. None better than she 

Knew what the terrible ride would cost 

As he rode, and she waited, each alone. 

Whether all were gained or all were lost, 

No message of either gain or loss 

Could reach her ; never a greeting stir 

Her heart with sorrow or gladness ; he 

In another year would come back to her 

If all went well; and if all went ill — 

Ah, God ! could even her courage still 

The pain at her heart ? If the blinding snow 

Were his winding sheet, she would never know ; 



Appendix. . 207 

If the Indian arrow pierced his side, 

She would never know where he lay and died ; 

If the icy mountain-torrents drowned 

His cry for help, she would hear no sound ! 

Nay, none would hear, save God, who knew 

What she had to bear, and she had to do. 

The clattering hoof-beats died away 

On the Walla Walla. Ah ! had she known 

They would echo in history still to-day 

As they echoed then from her heart of stone ! 



He has left the valley. The mountains mock 
His coming. Behind him, broad and deep. 
The Columbia meets the Pacific tides. 
Before him — four thousand miles before — 
Four thousand miles from his cabin door. 
The Potomac meets the Atlantic. On, 
Over the trail grown rough and steep, 
Now soft on the snow, now loud on the rock, 
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides. 
The United States must keep Oregon. 

It was October when he left 

The Walla Walla, though little heed 

Paid he to the season. Nay, indeed^ 

In the lonely canon just ahead. 

Little mattered it what the almanacs said. 

He heard the coyotes bark ; but they 

Are harmless creatures. No need to fear 

A deadly rattlesnake coiled too near. 

No rattlesnake ever was so bereft 

Of sense as to creep out such a day 

In the frost. Nay, scarce would a grizzly care 

For a sniff at him. Only a man would dare 



2o8 Appendix, 

The bitter cold, in whose heart and brain 
Burned the quenchless flame of a great desire — 
A man with nothing himself to gain 
From success, but whose heart blood kept its fire. 
While with freezing face he rode on and on. 
The United States must keep Oregon. 

It was November when they came 

To the icy stream. Would he hesitate ? 

Not he, the man who carried a State 

At his saddle-bow. They have made the leap ; 

Horse and rider have plunged below 

The icy current that could not tame 

Their proud life-current's fiercer flow. 

They swim for it, reach it, clutch the shore. 

Climb the river-bank cold and steep, 

Mount, and ride the rest of that day, 

Cased in an armor close and fine 

As ever an ancient warrior wore : 

Armor of ice that dared to shine 

Back at a sunbeam's dazzling ray. 

Fearless as plated steel of old 

Before the slender lance of gold! 

It is December as they ride 

Slowly across the Great Divide ; 

The blinding stomr turns day to night. 

And clogs their feet; the snowflakes roll 

Their winding-sheet about them ; sight 

Is darkened ; faint the despairing soul. 

No trail before or behind them. Spur 

His horse ? Nay, child, it were death to stir ! 

Motionless horse and rider stand, 

Turning to stone ; till one poor mule, 

Pricking his ears as if to say 

If they gave him rein he would find the way. 



Appendix. 209 



Found it, and led them back, poor fool, 
To last night's camp in that lonely land. 



It was January when he rode 
Into St. Louis, The gaping crowd 
Gathered about with questions loud 
And eager. He raised one frozen hand 
With a gesture of silent, proud command : 
*< I am here to ask, not answer ! Tell 
Me quick. Is the treaty signed ?" « Why, yes! 
In August, six months ago, or less !" 
Six months ago ! Two months before 
The gay young priest at the fortress showed 
The English hand ! Two months before, 
Four months ago at his cabin door, 
He had saddled his horse ! Too late, then. « Well, 
But Oregon ? Have they signed the State 
Away?" "Of course not. Nobody cares 
About Oregon." He in silence bares 
His head: "Thank God! I am not too late!" 
It was March when he rode at last 
Into the streets of Washington. 
The warning questions came thick and fast : 
^« Do you know that the British will colonize, 
If you wait another year, Oregon 
And the Northwest, thirty-six times the size 
Of Massachusetts !" A courteous stare, 
And the Government murmurs : " Ah ! indeed ! 
Pray, why do you think that we should care ? 
With Indian arrows and mountain snow 
Between us, we never can colonize 
The wild Northwest from the East, you know. 
If you doubt it, why, we will let you read 
The Lotidon Examiner ; proofs enough. 
The Northwest is worth just a pinch of snuft!" 



Appendix. 

And the Board of Missions that sent him out 
Gazed at the worn and weary man 
With stern displeasure : " Pray, sir, who 
Gave you orders to undertake 
This journey hither, or to incur, 
Without due cause, such great expense 
To the Board ? Do you suppose we can 
Overlook so grave an offense ? 
And the Indian converts ? What about 
The little flock for whose precious sake 
We sent you west ? Can it be that you 
Left them without a shepherd ? Most 
Extraordinary conduct, sir, 
Thus to desert your chosen post!" 



Ah, well ! What mattered it ? He had dared 
A hundred deaths in his eager pride 
To bring to his country at Washington 
A message for which, then, no one cared ! 
But Whitman could act, as well as ride ; 
The United States must keep the Northwest. 
He — whatever might say the rest — 
Cared, and would colonize Oregon ! 



It was October, forty-two, 

When the clattering hoof-beats died away 

On the Walla Walla, that fateful day. 

It was September, forty-three — 

Little less than a year, you see — 

When the woman who waited, thought she heard 

The clatter of hoof- beats that she knew 

On the Walla Walla again. " What word 

From Whitman?" Whitman himself! And see ! 

What do her glad eyes look upon ? 



■Appendix. 211 



The first of two hundred wagons rolls 

Into tlie valley before her. He 

Who, a year ago, had left her side, 

Had brought them over the Great Divide — 

Men, women and children, a thousand souls — 

The Army to occupy Oregon. 



You know the rest. In the books you have read 

That the British were not a year ahead. 

The United States have kept Oregon 

Because of one Marcus Whitman. He 

Rode eight thousand miles, and was not too late ! 

In his single hand, not a Nation's fate 

Perhaps; but a gift for the Nation she 

Would hardly part with to-day, if we 

May believe what the papers say upon 

This great Northwest that was Oregon. 



And Whitman ! Ah 1 my children, he 
And his wife sleep now in a martyr's grave ! 
Murdered I Murdered both he and she. 
By the Indian souls they went West to save I 
—From Representative Poems, Cassell 6^ Co., N'ew York. 



LlbKAHY Ul- UUNUI-ltC>S 




11111:11 




017 187 379 4 



